It is reserved and formal, even at its most frenetic. And it is reticent, even in its sadness. This tango is the faded echo that pleasure leaves behind. It evokes, not sex itself, but the nostalgia for sex. The Color of Love does not take place in a living present.
Nothing is more fleeting than an orgasm, after all.
It's over, almost before it has begun. It happens in the barest sliver of an instant, like the time between one frame of film and the next. But it is surrounded by stretches of empty time, in which nothing happens. A time of infinite longing lies before it. And a time of slow forgetting extends after.