Nini was the only Farrow child who Gil never molested and was too stupid for believing Kelly lied about her him molesting her and that he just spanked her for locking Patrick in the bathroom when he was really molesting her just like he was with Patrick and Christina.
shareI'm sorry but I don't understand why you think she is stupid for believing her father. Like you said, she was apparently never molested by her father, and so for that reason alone, of course she would have thought he was good and innocent. That does NOT make her stupid, Nini and Kelly were already not that close and since Kelly had a history of bullying her and lying in general, then of course she would not believe her sister. Also she was still just a little girl, you can pretty much manipulate children's minds into thinking whatever you want them to think. If anyone is stupid in the family then the only one you should be blaming is Mary for taking her disgusting husbands side and not her own children.
shareWhen Kelly tried to tell her mother about her father molesting her, what was her mother's reaction?
shareAs I recall, the mother was disbelieving of Kelly and supported her husband right up to and including his sentancing for child abuse. As mentioned previously, the idea that this child had a history of being less than truthful would work to an abuser's advantage--in fact, Kelly towards the end reminds her father that he had said that very thing to her, that "Nobody will believe you." This film reminded me, in fact, that even with adult victims of rape, folks will often look for some reason to say "She asked for it because of dress/drug use/lifestyle in general."
shareMary also made a telling comment early on that both Kelly and Kristina were "cut from the same cloth - the two of you open your mouths and I never know what story is going to come out". She basically thought her two older daughters were liars and believed in her husband. No doubt his conviction at the end gave her a good hard dose of reality as well as her role in her children's abuse.
shareI think Mary was in denial really. Maybe a part of her knew the real truth but wanted to keep it from the rest of her for as long as possible. After all, accepting that her children were being truthful and her husband was guilty would be hard for any wife and mother to accept, especially since it would make her face up to her own guilt over not seeing what was going on and doing something about it. Of course, what Gil did was NOT Mary's fault, but from her own personal perspective I think she would have seen it that way. I also wonder why Nini was the only child in the family that Gil never abused. Sometimes parents do single out one child in particular to abuse, but why all the other three and not Nini?
shareMary and Nini's reaction to Gil's conviction and sentencing just ripped my heart out but Gil got what he deserved. The part where Mary said, we were a family once, Kel and then one day I woke up and it was all taken away. Her perfect little family may be important to Mary but that's not more important than her kids' lives. But, where was Mrs. Hildebrandt taking Nini in the end?
shareI haven't seen that in years.
share"I also wonder why Nini was the only child in the family that Gil never abused. Sometimes parents do single out one child in particular to abuse, but why all the other three and not Nini?"
Well, given his history with his other three children, it would've probably been only a matter of time before he started doing to her what he did to them.
Money isn't the root of all evil. Love of money is.
Maybe he might have starting abusing Nini later on but I’m not so sure. I say this because he seemed to find it very easy to prey on the other 3 for certain reasons. For example, both Christina and Kelly were known for lying, plus Kelly was always doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing so he figured that no one would believe them anyway. And Patrick hardly ever spoke at all so he assumed that he wouldn’t say anything. Nini adored her father as he could do no wrong in her eyes and she wasn’t as easy of a target as they were so I believe that is the reason why she wasn’t abused.
shareThat is a very good theory.
shareI agree!
The end didn't rip into my heart; not only was I satisifed to see that s.o.b. get what he deserved, but it was time for that darn mom and sister to face up to reality; they ALWAYS took the Dad's side, even when it came to his harsh punishment of Kelly (he was obviously rough even if they thought it was just spanking) and there's no reason to pull a kid's pants down for spanking, that's just inappropriate!
her mother got up, turned off the light, said "Kelly, i don't know what story you're cooking up now, but i don't think i like it. not one little bit." closed the door, and left her little girl alone. then she crawled into her husband's lap and asked in an offhanded way if he'd been "fooling around" with their pre-teen daughter. later on, once the police have arrested him, she asks Kelly, in an accusatory manner, "what have you done to this family now?" and finally, during the trial, she tells Kelly she feels "pulled in all of these different directions" and that they "were a family once", as if it's Kelly's fault. and in the courtroom, she sat on the father's side showing support to him, leaving Kelly alone on the other side of the room, sitting with a social worker. so yeah, that was her mother's reaction. why were you asking?
shareI take back any sympathy I ever had: that woman is a MOTHER bitch.
shareI watched some of the movie last night just for the scene you described, and it was so weird; everything was out of the blue and then just dropped. Kelly asked those off questions and her mom just left instead of asking what the heck she meant and my gosh, what was going on; then she asked her husband "Have you been fooling around with Kelly?" like she was really asking whether he raped their daughter, just like that? Then forgot it, just like that? What's going on in her head??
sharei know!! my jaw hit the ground when the mother asked the father that and then just let it drop.
shareThe only thing I could think of that made sense was that the mom meant to ask whether the dad was doing something Kelly could misinterpret, like rolling on the floor with her, then caught herself with her strange wording and realized the whole thing was too strange, so she dropped it. Still..it was so weird all the way around.
shareWatching again now...everything seemed so normal, the dad so nice in the beginning. But the entire atmosphere changed when he got furious with Kelly: storming up the stairs and calling her a smartass, like she was an adult, and the mother was so tense with his temper (Nini was also a better sister than I remembered her being around this point). Then the way he screamed at her in the car..something definitely wasn't right, and it made her siblings unhappy too.
I can understand how the mom would automatically assume Kelly was lying and had some bad personality disorder, because it's much easier than the unthinkable alternative; the actress acted so calm after the husband was arrested and she just looked at Kelly, almost flatly asking what she'd done to the family, while she should have been yelling, "Why did you say those things? What's been happening here?" There wasn't nearly enough interaction with Kelly from the rest of her family after that point; even if Kelly wouldn't talk to her mom, seems like everyone else was barely talking to Kelly either, acting more upset than purely shocked, like they should have.
The mom brought up the physical evidence to the dad and rebuffed his ridiculous suggestion that that pint-sized boy did it, assuming his innocence but trying to puzzle things out. At this point, I find her almost sympathetic even though her behavior (and the family's) of talking to the dad and not even bothering trying to drill Kelly for information is weird. But WHY was she so calm, as well as almost everyone else? It was later on, when Christina began testifying and the dad said she was lying to the mom, and the mom nodded her head at the dad like she BELIEVED it even then, that I was gobsmacked. I was also aggravated at Nini when she smiled momentarily as the judge declared the dad not guilty of the first charge: BOTH her sisters testified against him, couldn't she see he was a monster now? After that, the mother's mindset was a mystery to me; it had always seemed before like she realized he must have been guilty at the end. But her nodding at the father threw me, and now even though the truth still seems like it must have been evident to her, I wasn't entirely sure what she was crying for at the end, or who.
i didn't get the feeling that she was crying for her children, that's for sure. was she crying for her husband, whom she, beyond all reason, still believed was innocent? or was she crying for herself? neither choice is justifiable when she has three broken children.
shareThe way she cried after her last child was taken from her, it seemed she was crying for how she failed as a mom; that always seemed like her last stand fell, to me.
sharefair enough :) i may be looking at the mother through my own filter. my mother did absolutely nothing for me when she discovered i had been raped by my uncle - something i don't say here for sympathy or attention but simply as an explanation for why i, perhaps, am seeing this particular mother the way i do. i guess i'm projecting my anger at my own mother onto this character. it's possible the mother wasn't abhorrent to the end, but there was so much more she could have and should have done for her children that i am unable to see where she becomes a sympathetic character.
shareI am so sorry you dealt with such monsters. I'm also not sure I do sympathize with the mom, I just don't find her as repugnant as the dad bc I don't think she ended up THAT much in denial. I think she held up till the end, nodding at the dad like an idiot partly because she was still desperately clinging to a shred of hope, right up until after she calmly asked for kid counseling and finally crumpled with nothing less to pretend. She'd said she couldn't live with herself if it had been happening without her knoweldge and that was the thing, she couldn't let herself really imagine it; that her kid had been abused, that she'd been happily having sex with the monster she thought was her other half. Believe me if she hasn't totally cracked in that scene she will, and she's gonna have a mountain of guilt possibly worse than Christina's to deal with.