The Center of the World

Peter Sarsgaard stars in this saucy drama as an unfulfilled dot-com wiz whose company is about to go public. Although he’s about to become very wealthy, it’s intimacy that he craves, so he offers an exotic dancer $10,000 to accompany him to Las Vegas. Molly Parker, Pat Morita, Mel Gorham, Carla Gugino, Balthazar Getty. Wayne Wang directed., The probability of sex and the possibility of love between twenty-somethings — a lonely man and a fiercely independent and emotionally unavailable woman — is at the core of the Center of the World. Peter Sarsgaard plays Richard, a successful computer engineer who knows nothing quite as intimately as his hardware and software. Florence (Molly Parker) is a struggling rock drummer who makes her living as a stripper and is the object of his desire, though she couldn’t have more walls and bridges erected to keep potential partners away. Richard makes her an offer she can’t refuse, and the two spend a sex-filled weekend together in Las Vegas on Richard’s dime. The resulting humiliation, hurt, ecstasy, and brief connection conspire to confuse the situation. Neither Richard nor Flo seems capable of bonding with another person, both feeling more comfortable in isolation. The digital video medium captures the intimacy (or lack of it) and immediacy of the fast-paced arrangements and exchanges, set against the backdrop of a thriving dot-com age that mirrors the characters’ similarly chaotic emotional worlds.