Working as a video store clerk has its perquisites, one of which is being able to rent anything from the vast library the store offers. When one considers what's available between six locations, it's a dizzying array of choices, usually curtailed only by expediency and convenience. That said, when any employee falls behind and fails to maintain his or her section of the store at a satisfactory level, your rental account is temporarily suspended. This is a cautionary tale.

Shortly after ferreting The Five Obstructions out of the store, I succumbed to a certain amount of guilt, the pang of middle-class fairness, even though I was hell-bent on watching the Volker Schlondorff collaborations with his former wife Margrethe Von Trotta. No sooner did I get The Lost Honor of Katherine Blum home did I find myself distracted by this teensy abrogation of store policy - something many employees have done over the years: no big deal. Nevertheless, despite being fascinated by the film's premise, I returned it before I'd been hooked, right around the time Blum chooses to be jailed than make small talk with her captors. So today, when my account reopened I immediately rented Lost Honor again, along with Coup De Grace, both Criterion Collection releases.

See, that the other thing: if you're like me and are a culture fetishist, and are someone who can't bring themselves to download films for personal use because you crave the amazing packaging and included essays, work at a video store (or a record store, you get the idea) can be an ordeal. When all is said and done a service industry wage doesn't go very far, and with all the special edition repackaging that's been re-released in the past year, it's led to some difficult decisions - as much as I love Dr. Strangelove, how can I do without L'Eclisse? These new film noirs distributed by Fox are great, but why aren't they neatly coordinated in a box set? It might spare me a buck or two! Renting them isn't enough; I want to have them right alongside my favorite books and music, be able to grab them down and watch them any time, not just when the store and my account are open!

My March was maddening because my steady diet of films had been cut off. Watch out for more frequent postings, including another (belated) edition of Being There dealing with Antonioni's quadrilogy (upped the ante!) dealing with ennui and bourgeois morality - La Notte, L'Avventura, L'Eclisse, and The Red Desert.