IX

		short of the goal because the painter's "distortions" were based on his experience of each site, transforming it in a unique manner. 29 In the end, we must realize that the bedroom as painted cannot be projected outward because it owes its existence to one man's mind, not to everyday reality or a systematic program. In like fashion, who or what stands next to the man and woman in Edgar Degas's The Glass of Absinthe (1876)? Unlike Van Gogh's bedroom, which was self-contained, the view here is "partial, fragmentary, contingent," thus begging us to complete the caf setting.30 Surely we should be able to imagine other customers, a waiter, more tables and chairs, bottles and glasses, and the patron behind the counter. As we do so though, we go to work with the good intentions of a Hollywood art director. Like him or her, we can only provide what our knowledge of contemporary paintings or photographs suggest could be there. Once again, the artist's own lively imagination would remain missing from such a scheme. Indeed, the man and the woman in the picture, that particular caf , the emotion that suffuses the text, all of that originates from Degas's life experience (and perhaps the influence of other works). And if Degas himself had decided after all to add a waiter to the scenery, his choice would be unlike the one selected by the casting agency in our head. Again, what the work represents cannot be expanded to the rest of the world. It is inevitably distinct, autonomous, self-contained.

		Understood this way, we realize there is really nothing beyond the borders of the frame. The whole that these images at first suggest is in fact "neither given nor giveable," Deleuze concludes. The frame inevitably falls apart at the edges where the world resumes its diversity, its formlessness, its non-filmic reality. What is outside the world, the totality cannot possibly be controlled. For "its nature," Deleuze says, "is to change constantly."31 It is thus totally unpredictable. All in all, what is within the frame ends up being the center of nothing at all beyond itself. What is shown is all there is.

		VIII

		In film, however, what we do not see can become problematic. Typically, the standard way of shooting makes sure that the spectator finds no gap or hole in the scenery. To have any area on the screen off limits is annoying to audiences because this makes clear to them that they do not own the place, that someone else is controlling what they see and do not see