The geometry of relationships is entirely built up out of two primary forms the one-and-the-world and the one-and-the-alter-one. The Buberian language of the 'I-it' and the 'I-thou' gets this, but drastically misleads by making them alternatives and by moralising the distinction. They are building blocks which combine in structures according to rules of concatenation and subsumption. Sartre's for-itself (vs. in-itself) and for-the-other does much better; they are the only two ontological foundations in experience and every kind of unfolding complexity is brought about by combining them in the aforesaid ways. For example, it means that there is no three-ness, so that a triangle is inherently unstable - if two are for each other the third is for (looking at, or being looked at by) the two together as an objective (or subjective). Furthermore the common self expressed in the 'we' or 'us' operates at a more superficial level, being a mode of the 'I' in relation to the 'it' of a collective. The 'I' is not sufficient in itself and seeks to consolidate itself by attempting to change the content it assigns to itself or to its world, on the basis of its awareness of its troubled relation to other-I. To see it in this way is to go against the sort of psychologisation that gives primacy to social instincts such as the need for acceptance by the group, or for attention. Hence the description of intimate relations that is possible in a novel is deeper than that which can be shown in a film, since in the latter the relationship is seen as taking place right in front of the observer as audience or camera, whereas in a text the sense of immediate presence is preserved by being ruled out by the very form. This is why the earliest novels tended to be epistolatory. Is there such a thing as an epistolatory movie? Chris Marker's "Sans Soleil" comes to mind, the exception that proves the rule, since it is necessarily one-way and narrated from a distance. On the other hand cinematic elements in novels are a sign of decadence.