'Ennui And Malaise' (Episodes 1-4)

'Ennui And Malaise': A late-night, low-budget teen series yoking together the cinema of John Hughes, radical French theory and avant-garde literature in a deranged aesthetic mix while exploring the sexual adventures of two lovestruck teenage waifs- the rich and miserable Alex and his sulking, brittle girlfriend Sophie- as they drag themselves through the wasteland of adolescence by getting intergalactically fucked-up, listening to an impossibly hip soundtrack of European electronica in an obscure format and talking endlessly about forgotten branches of philosophy in the gloomy kitchen of Alex's father's flat in hour-long installments which are televisual analogues to wintery ice-cream headaches induced by frost and bad drugs. A cult hit.

Episode One: Alex and Sophie go to a fancy dress party each wearing masks of the other's face, then drink far too much rum, clumsily fuck in an empty bath and pass out before a roaring fire like dosed kittens while their homosexual friend Fox reads The Story Of The Eye aloud to a mute androgyne on a brown couch. Soundtrack: 'Anna Livia Plurabelle' by James Joyce and 'Louder Than Bombs' by The Smiths. Subtitles.

Episode Two: The legendary 'Kitchen' episode. Sophie and Alex have an argument late one night over who finished the bacon. Throughout a skinny mime holds up cue cards that dictate how the viewer should feel- for example, 'Aroused' card is held aloft when he eats biscuit crumbs from her belly button, 'Culturally Aware' card is held when a knowing reference is made to Godard's 'La Chinoise'. Soundtrack: 'Jennifer' by Faust. Subtitles.

Episode Three: After a brief discourse on the misdefinition of irony at a bowling alley where Alex has to explain to his friend Stephen that having no hands at a wake for someone killed in a car crash is not of itself ironic but merely a bleak image the episode switches to focus on Sophie's trip to Brooklyn. She takes LSD in a bathroom during a thunderstorm ('Pathetic Fallacy'/ 'Foreshadowing' intertitle), hallucinates her transformation into a badger and then into a man, leading to a digression on Nietzschean 'Ubermensch' theory before she begins performing befuddled sexual favours on the L train then gets ditched at Prospect Park where the sky explodes like a massive firework. She wakes up somewhere in Bensonhurst, eating bacon on the kerb with two skinhead fascists and licking their fingers. Soundtrack: 'Threnody For Victims Of Hiroshima' by Pendericki and Fur Alina by Arvo Part. Subtitles.

Episode Four: Sophie and Alex have anal sex one overcast afternoon then go to Paris. Both listen to the new Kompakt compilation with lukewarm joy on the metro and attend a lecture held by Slovenian philosopher and guest star Slavoj Zizek on inherent fallacies in deconstruction and the pleasure of the gaze in Lynch's Blue Velvet. Then Alex gets lost in the Montparnasse Cemetery looking for Beckett's grave and Sophie steals some animal tranquilisers from a Tintin kid. They end up fucking under a denuded tree. Contains a famous re-enactment of Cocteau's Orphee at the end. Soundtracked by 'Tigermilk' by Belle And Sebastian.

1. Herbert- Freeze

2. Belle And Sebastian- Lazy Line Painter Jane

3. De La Soul- Eye Know

Photograph of Chloe Sevigny by Terry Richardson. No copyright infringement intended.