...is supposed to be the daughter of the red-haired Amnesty International guy who's going to hook up with Fiona? If else, why is she there on Christmas/other fictional festivity Day? Doesn't she have a family to pass vacation with? Unlikely, since she attends that seemingly middle-class private school.
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Haha, I didn't even think about that :) Maybe she is his daughter, ya never know...
shareWell, maybe here parents are dicks and she just doesn't want to spend christmas with them? :) I mean, considering how Fiona is, her parents might very well be divorced alcoholics for all we know.
shareI have to ask, what exactly is it about Fiona that makes you think she's the product of alcohol-abusing parents?
That's the most you'll ever get out of me Wordman. Ever. -Eddie Wilson
Ellie has nothing to do with the Amnesty guy. I know it's not ideal to rely on the book as a lot of things are different (the book's set in 1993/4 for a start), but if the film follows the novel she's just there because she's Marcus's friend, though probably not his girlfriend. Ellie's mother [in the book] despairs of her so would be glad to be rid of her at Christmas.
BTW, I'm not sure what you mean by private school. It looks like a bog-standard state school to me (or 'comp', speaking as a Briton), though it's obviously difficult to represent a normal London school on film because all the pupils will have gone to Sylvia Young or some other stage school.
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Yea, the school is hard for Americans to understand. Basically because everyone is talking in a British accent, we immediately assume it's an upper-class rich-kids private school -- that and the uniforms.
But I think the Weitz bros. tried to show that this was a pretty rough and tumble London public school, esp. at the 'kidz jam' concert at the end...
Mmm. Uniforms are a big thing in Britain - they're supposed to exist so you can't distinguish poor kids from the more comfortably-off ones, like you're not going to find out in a million other ways.
The real kicker for non-British people is that we actually use the term 'public school' to mean those reserved for the privileged such as Eton and Harrow. I have no idea why!
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I don't think this get together at the end of the movie is necessarily Christmas day - it could just be Will's getting together with friends during the season. He's invited his girlfriend and her son, his Amnesty International friend (who's there of course to give Fiona a touch of a happy ending), Fiona and Will, and Ellie because she's Will's girlfriend. It's not uncommon for girlfriends or boyfriends to spend a holiday dinner with their partner's family/friends even Christmas day. And no he's not Ellie's father - obviously Fiona has never met him before and she likely would have met Ellie's parents by that point.
shareI don't think this get together at the end of the movie is necessarily Christmas dayThen why did Will say it was?
No she isn't! She's just there because it's showing a network of people. Presumably Marcus invited her and she wanted to be there with them. It's been a while since I saw the film but I think the implication is she didn't spend the whole Christmas with her family. In the book it's clear her parents are divorced and her being a rebel she doesn't get on much with either so spending Christmas (or part of Christmas) away isn't too far-fetched.
In the book, her Mum is good friends with Suzie, so there's another connection there which is how she meets Marcus at New Year's.
Also lol that you think it's a seemlingly middle-class private school. How did you miss that? It's a rough London comprehensive. That's why there were so many tough kids and bullying. All schools in the UK have uniforms, if that's what threw you off. Had Marcus been at a private school, the bullying probably would have been dealt with better.
Having just watched the film and the deleted scenes, Ellie mentions that her mum is an alcoholic and is a member of SPAT, thus Fiona would know her mother from there. In the same (deleted) scene Ellie also refers to her mother as a cow showing that she probably would not spend Christmas with her given the opportunity not to do so.
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