• love triangle
• desert fever
• nightmare factory

A secluded motel in the desert of Arizona; nearby: a film set. While the male lead is waiting to shoot his next scene, his wife Chloe is waiting for the scars from her plastic surgery to heal and to be able to use her eyes again. She recently had laser treatment to avoid having to wear glasses. Blind and bandaged, she relies more than ever on her young assistant Hannah, and they keep going over and over Chloe’s lines. Unlike Tom, Chloe only has a small part in the film, and unlike him, the good-looking young star, she has to invest considerably more in her middle age: in her looks as well as in her art.

Three people entangled in a triangle of desires and dependencies around the empty centre of an existence consisting of roles that you wear and fill as well and as intensely as possible until this procedure starts to feel like life. The internal emptiness of the three characters is reflected in the external emptiness of the desert which swallows people only to spit them out again – symbolized by a girl who vanishes from the set and suddenly reemerges in the motel room.

Sam Max plays with typical set pieces of American culture and combines classic motifs like a motel, the desert and Hollywood with contemporary reflection on body image, modes of relationships and techniques of self-presentation. Sam Max is working in Germany for the first time, directing their own text with a cast of three ensemble members.