Nabokov's "Natasha"

In Valdimir Nabokov's short story "Natasha" we are presented with characters living in separate realties from one another. Wolfe, who lives out fantasies of a life as a man-of-the-world, Natasha, who lives in an ethereal limbo of self-denial and Khrenov - in a reality that is and isn't defined by the present, a reality that's slowly deteriorating, punctuated only by unpleasant dreams of his past.

For me, Nabokov's language always seems to distance itself from the characters, and thus the characters from the reader. By the time Wolfe and Natasha share their date in the the park, we realize that we really cannot trust anything they say or do - they are too far gone.

The story, to me, seems more cinematic than literary - in that so many of the descriptions, which are so specifically visual ("the sleek, girlish part of her hair") seem like the flashes or glimpses of cut up images that you would see in a fim. So, I found myself reading this story and being more affected by the tone and the feel of it rather than whatever plot there was. A sort of hazy, sleepy, other-worldly feel - slightly upsetting, but in a subtle way.

I recently saw a film called We Need to Talk About Kevin that, while certainly not comparable at all in terms of story, seems to have this intangible tone that the story does: