Based on a short story by John Cheever,The Geometry of Love is the tragicomic tale of an engineer, Mallory, who is obsessed with the idea of hiswife's "phantom lover"-obsessed, that is, with his wife's obsession-and who believes that, by turning to ageometric analysis of his problems, he can defuse the illogic he encounters at every turn. If the triangle isthe basis of the family structure (as it is of his adult romantic angst), surely Euclidian theory must hold theanswer. Much of the film was initially shot without sound; the story is told through striking visual collageas well as through conventional action, with a voice-over narration whose reliability is continually placedin question by the image. Filmmakers Rafael Wang and David Allison translate the tension inherent inCheever's measured prose into visual terms: the black-and-white film is sinister in its simplicity, in itscareful selection of images. The inner world of the troubled Mallory is made manifest in his urbanenvironment: the seemingly constant rain, people hurrying nowhere in slow motion, and all those women inWoolworths who "appear to have been taken in adultery and are now shopping for a present to take home totheir youngest child."