运河长尾船追逐

A low chase camera skimming a hand's width above the water in a narrow canal at dusk, two wooden longtail boats running flat out between stilt houses with laundry strung overhead. The lead boat carries one woman at the tiller in a soaked linen shirt, the second is two lengths back and closing, its long-shaft propeller throwing a rooster tail that lights up orange in the last of the sun. She looks back once, then flattens herself along the gunwale as a low concrete footbridge comes up, and her boat goes under it with about thirty centimeters of clearance. The pursuing driver ducks too late, has to haul off into the pilings, and his boat slews, catches, and keeps coming. The camera stays locked at water level tracking parallel and never rises above the gunwale line, one continuous shot with no cuts. Anamorphic, hard low sun flaring off the wake, deep shadow under the houses, heavy grain. Two unmuffled engines at full throttle, water slamming both hulls, wood hitting concrete, birds coming off the roofline, no score.