In this deliriously romantic version of "The Count of Monte Cristo," it's 1973 at a glamorous Florida resort. Catching a glimpse of Gretchen Mol stepping out of the surf like Botticelli's Venus -- all she's missing is the shell -- cabana boy Joseph Fiennes knows his life will never be real without her. Soon he's talked her into bed, and it was like the discovery of gold for both of them, but she's only been married eight months and the pain of what she's done is ripping her apart. "Stop talking like an adult," Fiennes says oddly. "Tell me why." "Why what?" Mol says. "What do you think?" Fiennes says. "Why do birds sing so gay? Why does the rain fall from up above? Why did you get married?" -- and the old words from Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers' "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" slip in and out of Fiennes' speech as if he thought up the words on the spot. Because of many kinds of misfortune, the film is slated for a Nov. 4 showing on the Starz cable channel rather than a theatrical release; until distribution catches up with the picture the Telluride screenings will be the only chance to see it on a screen as big as its reach.

2) Trailer Bride at the Great American Music Hall (San Francisco, July 28)

At the head of America's least obvious country band, Melissa Swingle could have escaped from a 1936 Walker Evans photograph; she doesn't make eye contact. For that matter, she looks at the floor, as if she has something to say but doesn't want to have to stand up in front of people to get it across. In tune with her sardonic, self-effacing waitress' I get off at 10 and then I go home drawl, she offers a few splayed-leg dance steps in lieu of arm gestures or head fakes. "Whine de Lune," the band called its album; that's the sound Swingle, who plays everything but drums and bass, gets from a saw while guitarist Scott Goolsby, carrying what could be 8 inches of pompadour, puts hard, dead-cowboy notes in the air and then makes them dissolve, so slowly it's as if you could watch it happen, and so definitively it's hard to believe you heard what you heard.

3) MasterCard commercial

Cognitive dissonance sighting, as reported by Charlie Largent: "Various 'Priceless' descriptions of family bonding ('For everything else there's MasterCard'), all set to the tune of 'Lolita's Theme' from the 1962 Kubrick film ... "

4) Salon's Table Talk (July 27)

Hazel Shade: "I keep thinking that Lorillard and Brown & Williamson, et al., should simply start a cigarette campaign like the Apple and the Gap khaki ads. Think of it, a sexy picture of every interesting person since the inception of photography: 'Bob Dylan smoked.' 'FDR smoked.' 'Albert Einstein smoked.' 'Greta Garbo smoked.' 'Miles Davis smoked.' 'Albert Camus smoked.' Wouldn't it be great?"

William Ham: "A few years ago, I wanted to pitch the American Psychiatric Association an ad featuring that classic picture of Lou Reed with the Iron Crosses shaved into his tonsure with the legend 'Lou Reed Had Shock Treatment.' I really think it could have touched off an electrode renaissance."

5) CBS Radio News (July 27)

For a spot on Federal District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel's decision, later stayed, mandating suspension of Napster operations, an interviewer found guitarist G.E. Smith, late of the "Saturday Night Live" band and Bob Dylan's "Never Ending Tour" and famed for his ability to combine obsequiousness with self-glorification: "It costs money to get our product out there," Smith said, then complaining that people take it off the Net for nothing and "it's not fair." As if anyone would pay money for a record because his name was on it -- with Napster he might get heard by accident. So score one for the judge.

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