"Breakfast anj Tiffany's" plays a memorable scene from the (almost) homonymous film "Breakfast at Tiffany's", originally written by Truman Capote. The film presents an idealized city of New York in the early 60's where its protagonist, Holly, is a charming woman who lives a childhood innocence dressed in Givenchy outfits while attending high society parties. Holly's seemingly carefree independence changes when she meets her neighbor Paul, an aspiring writer who is supported by a wealthy woman. 

The painting presented here subtly intervenes the scene without breaking its essence. The observer will be able to perceive a static situation, which is not given by the immobility of the format, but rather by the nature of a mysterious and seductive situation: Paul invites her neighbor, with whom he has had an adventurous afternoon, to enter his apartment. A long look behind the masks fills the work and the space that is formed between both characters is progressively stressed. This negative space lodges both the invitation made to his beloved to cross the threshold of the anj together, as well as the vulnerability of waiting to be reciprocated before such proposal. 

The anj, painted as a key and as a door, symbolizes eternal life. Its combined aspect between an oval and a cross represents the function of the feminine and masculine principles, the advent of Isis and Osiris united and, therefore, the overcoming of death. The invitation that Holly receives from her supposed beloved, possessor of the key of the anj, is an invitation to overcome death: the death of an empty and concealing lifestyle, the death that the mask causes to the true face, death, in Finally, the fear of death itself. The tension is solved with the help of subtitles, which additionally contribute to its cinematographic composition. 

What this painting teaches us is that being the possessor of the key of the anj, of eternal life, does not necessarily imply being reciprocated in the invitation to cross that threshold, just as the fact of being alive does not imply that one has the courage to face death.

Eternal life becomes an aspiration from the moment we are trapped by time. We can accept that our life is finite as long as we can abandon ourselves to experience, because then every moment will last an eternity or, even better, a timelessness. The truth is that not everyone is willing to accept death in exchange for living life and Holly expresses it very well by saying "Thanks dear, but I'm better off complaining".

Breakfast anj Tiffany´s, 60x90cm, oil on canvas