Jordan Gelber wears a Bell & Ross BR 01-94

Dark Horse is Todd Solondz at his most uncomfortable. Abe, played by Jordan Gelber, is a heavyset man in his thirties who still lives with his parents, works without working at his father's real estate office, and keeps his childhood bedroom full of action figures still in their boxes. Christopher Walken and Mia Farrow play the parents. Selma Blair plays Miranda, the depressed woman he latches onto.

On Abe's wrist is a Bell & Ross BR 01-94, and you can pick it out in the scene where he sits with Miranda on his bed under the polka-dot wallpaper. It is a big square watch, about 46 millimeters, with four screws at the corners of the case, a design Bell & Ross lifted straight from the instrument clocks bolted into aircraft cockpits. Abe's is the carbon-black version with orange chronograph accents. Bell & Ross built the brand on watches for fighter pilots and bomb-disposal units.

It is a strange watch for this particular man. The BR 01 is sold as a pilot's instrument, all function and legibility, the kind of thing you wear because you might need to read it at a glance in a cockpit. Abe spends the film avoiding his job and arguing with his mother. The watch says one thing about him and the rest of the movie says another, and the film never draws attention to the gap. It is just on his wrist.