How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

The narrator and the pretty girl initially bond over movies. He is working as a delivery boy for pirated DVDs and she asks him to acquire the most popular title for her. Their ensuing, sporadic phone calls are spent talking about the movies, the actors in them, and anything else of a cinematic nature that interests her. The narrator does not maintain his interest in movies in the same way she does. At various points in the novel she is shown with a movie on in the background, a fact that is noticed even when she is being surveilled by the drone. Later, she and the narrator go to a movie in their old age and find that movies still feel like the most natural thing for them to talk about.

Movies in the novel are a distraction, an entertainment, and an escape from real life. They are a symbol of the need that the narrator and the pretty girl have to forget who they are, although they also serve as the tool that begins their relationship.