8 In her essay, “A Likely Story,” Rainer asks “Can the presentation of sexual conflict or the presentation of love and jealousy be revitalized through a studied placement or dislocation of cliches borrowed from soap opera or melodrama?” Since Lives is subtitled “a melodrama,” it is hard to resist reading this as a rhetorical question stating her intentions with respect to that film. See: Yvonne Rainer, “A Likely Story,” ibid., p. 139 (emphasis added).