Preceded by short: The Kiss (USA, 1992). Written, directed by and starring Philip Kan Gotanda, author of The Wash, this is the story of an unassuming office worker who hides inside his small regimented world until the day he witnesses a life-threatening event, forcing him to make a choice that will alter his life. Produced by Jim Yee. (13 mins, B&W, 16mm, From NAATA). The Wash, a drama of a middle-aged Japanese American couple in the throes of rupture, resonates with the poetry of its painful and funny observation of real life. Superbly cast in the lead roles are Mako, as Nobu, a salt-of-the-earth husband and father who thrives on the self-absorbed silences that sidestep humiliation; and Nobu McCarthy as Masi, who bears bottled-up energy and sexuality under a long-suffering facade. In a moment of breakthrough honesty some forty years in the making, she asks, "Why don't you want me anymore?" She leaves Nobu, later to embark on an affair with a kindly (and sexy) widower (Sab Shimono). But she returns periodically to do her husband's laundry. It is these small absurdities of commitment, however passionless, that the film draws on in its portrait of a family breaking (and breaking under) the bonds of love.