let me try this again. i got an error message the first time:
ooh! discussion time!
SPOILERY: LOTS OF PLOT DETAILS DISCUSSED BELOW:
so, g and i saw it last week and were both underwhelmed. the visuals and acting and plot line were all fab. SWINTON! deserves all caps. but we found the character choices to be so . . . depressing.
e.g., it wasn't clear to me why SWINTON! fell in love. it seemed highly random. and i didn't see why her husband worth fleeing. was he supposed to be a pig? did the fact that he rechristened her emma mean he's misogynist? is it his fault she never returned to russia? he was clearly threatened when he was only named co-executor of the family business along with his son---does that mean he's petty? his dad was clearly a controlling jackass; does that mean he is, too? i don't pose these questions sarcastically, with snarky tone. i am genuinely puzzled as to whether or not i'm supposed to read those as proof that he was an incredibly disappointing mate.
and i am assuming he drove his wife away, into the arms of another, because i certainly saw very little that was sufficiently compelling in The Other Man to actually attract emma out of a very stable marriage. granted, it's the awesome to be able to cook well, but their connection seemed instant and passionate and inexplicable, well before she tasted his shrimp (not p0rny metaphor). e.g., they were making eyes at each other from the minute he came to the door to bring the cake. (is the fact that he bested her son in the race supposed to be a poetic sign that he's superior to the rest of the men in her life?)
do you disagree? did you think it made more sense, contextually, that emma was dissatisfied with her life and would be attracted to the chef instead? talk to me.
i did like the brief moment shared between mother and daughter, hair cropped short, each choosing what makes them happy (even if i can't understand why), though it will possibly bring disapprobation and possibly alienation from the family. that moment of shared understanding was lovely.
and the daughter-in-law. so consistently ignored. left to the background. that was incredibly sad. perhaps she was illustrating what it means to be an in-law in this family? perhaps that's what emma was fleeing? it's just emma never seemed to me to be that silent/downtrodden before her escape. i'm just not certain.
also, g said SWINTON!'s italian accent was pretty good. i don't hear italian accents well, so i had to trust him.
All very good questions, really, and I reflected on these things too, albeit much less cogently. My feeling was that the husband was a little bit of all of these things. Not a villain, though, which I loved. I felt that Emma was reconnecting with her truest self. That her defection wasn't a flight from a bad man but a flight from her own wrong choices.
i still have a big prejudice against people who pooh-pooh marriages that aren't evil in order to find their truest selves. i think there's something sacred about marriage vows, and to see someone walk away from something healthy and viable, though perhaps not dreamy, because they think they could have a different, even deeper, kind of happiness elsewhere . . . well, it upsets me. i'd rather see SWINTON! work on enriching her stable marriage into something more nurturing. from the information we were given, i couldn't view her marriage as disposable.
3 Comments:
let me try this again. i got an error message the first time:
ooh! discussion time!
SPOILERY: LOTS OF PLOT DETAILS DISCUSSED BELOW:
so, g and i saw it last week and were both underwhelmed. the visuals and acting and plot line were all fab. SWINTON! deserves all caps. but we found the character choices to be so . . . depressing.
e.g., it wasn't clear to me why SWINTON! fell in love. it seemed highly random. and i didn't see why her husband worth fleeing. was he supposed to be a pig? did the fact that he rechristened her emma mean he's misogynist? is it his fault she never returned to russia? he was clearly threatened when he was only named co-executor of the family business along with his son---does that mean he's petty? his dad was clearly a controlling jackass; does that mean he is, too? i don't pose these questions sarcastically, with snarky tone. i am genuinely puzzled as to whether or not i'm supposed to read those as proof that he was an incredibly disappointing mate.
and i am assuming he drove his wife away, into the arms of another, because i certainly saw very little that was sufficiently compelling in The Other Man to actually attract emma out of a very stable marriage. granted, it's the awesome to be able to cook well, but their connection seemed instant and passionate and inexplicable, well before she tasted his shrimp (not p0rny metaphor). e.g., they were making eyes at each other from the minute he came to the door to bring the cake. (is the fact that he bested her son in the race supposed to be a poetic sign that he's superior to the rest of the men in her life?)
do you disagree? did you think it made more sense, contextually, that emma was dissatisfied with her life and would be attracted to the chef instead? talk to me.
i did like the brief moment shared between mother and daughter, hair cropped short, each choosing what makes them happy (even if i can't understand why), though it will possibly bring disapprobation and possibly alienation from the family. that moment of shared understanding was lovely.
and the daughter-in-law. so consistently ignored. left to the background. that was incredibly sad. perhaps she was illustrating what it means to be an in-law in this family? perhaps that's what emma was fleeing? it's just emma never seemed to me to be that silent/downtrodden before her escape. i'm just not certain.
also, g said SWINTON!'s italian accent was pretty good. i don't hear italian accents well, so i had to trust him.
All very good questions, really, and I reflected on these things too, albeit much less cogently. My feeling was that the husband was a little bit of all of these things. Not a villain, though, which I loved. I felt that Emma was reconnecting with her truest self. That her defection wasn't a flight from a bad man but a flight from her own wrong choices.
i still have a big prejudice against people who pooh-pooh marriages that aren't evil in order to find their truest selves. i think there's something sacred about marriage vows, and to see someone walk away from something healthy and viable, though perhaps not dreamy, because they think they could have a different, even deeper, kind of happiness elsewhere . . . well, it upsets me. i'd rather see SWINTON! work on enriching her stable marriage into something more nurturing. from the information we were given, i couldn't view her marriage as disposable.
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