Mario's Bolex walk and Avril on sadness (pp. 758–759)
Chu is now looking at Mario, which for Mario is weird because he’s looking through the viewfinder, a lens-eye view, which means when Chu looks down from the lens to look at Mario it looks to Mario like he’s looking down south somewhere along Mario’s thorax. […] Chu’s face looks slightly oval and convex through the lens’s fish-eye, a jutting aspect.
Context
The scene's optics core: for the length of the exchange Mario sees Chu only as the lens sees him — "a lens-eye view," face gone "slightly oval and convex through the lens’s fish-eye," complexion "a kind of creamy green" when he zooms in tight — and eyelines stop matching (Chu looking at Mario's face reads, through the viewfinder, as looking at his thorax). To talk person-to-person Mario has to physically deflect the apparatus: "Mario directs the lens at Chu’s shower-thongs so he can look over the viewfinder at Chu", and Chu's plea for the same channel is "camera to one side". Two circuits — lens-mediated and face-to-face — running through one conversation, switchable only by pointing the camera at footwear.