There is, alas, a snake in their Eden. One night, as Perfidia’s team swarms an immigrant detention center, she accosts and arouses a U.S. Army officer (Sean Penn) whose name, Steven J. Lockjaw, is as comically blunt as hers. A sexual cat-and-mouse game ensues, complete with kinky phallic gunplay. It’s a strange match, to say the least. Perfidia is the most determined of agitators, and Lockjaw is a scowling racist; in Penn’s tightly wound performance, we see lust spiked with self-loathing. But Anderson knows that, amid clashing political extremes, racial and ideological purists can make surprising, and treacherous, bedfellows. Shortly after Perfidia gives birth to a daughter, Charlene, everything goes horribly wrong: many members of the French 75 are captured or killed, and Pat and newborn Charlene go into hiding. Perfidia vanishes for good, and you miss her terribly; Taylor is so vivid that even her absence becomes a presence.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter