Can somebody explain the end?
I just didn't get it...
Thank you
Well, several years after Livia died in that boating accident, Mirjam and Bill are living together, and possibly even married, and traveling the world. While they are back in Germany, they visit with Livia's mother. Livia's mother reads them the letter that Livia was actually writing the night before she died-- it doesn't matter who the letter was actually going to. it appears that Livia was actively trying to make Mirjam and Bill get together by making Mirjam jealous-- that is the big reveal of the movie. Livia was actually trying to act as matchmaker between the two. The irony is that she was too good at attracting Bill and making Livia jealous and that it probably led to Mirjam's carelessness and Livia's death. At the same time, out of the tragedy if Livia's death, Mirjam was forced to realize that she could not longer live happily with her husband and without livia there, Bill was able to accept her as a lover . . .
shareI think there's another layer here, in that while Livia's precocious little plan worked technically, it really didn't work out for Miriam. She's clearly not happy with Bill at the end, and Bill definitely isn't happy with her - that's why you get the whole "are you happy" thing at the end.
I never got that Miriam was really all that unhappy with her husband in the first place, but Livia's mechanations sparked a kind of general dis-ease within that probably happens to everyone in middle stages of life.
Doubly heartbreaking for me.
Yet another boring European passive-aggressive psychodrama that exudes distrubing values: it worships the satiation of the woman's [Miriam] desire for the ultimate male more than it values life [Livia].
shareI didn't see Livia doing anything to bring Bill and Miriam together. She wasn't shown to be worldly in that regard. She made a few statements about boys and sex,etc. But didn't strike me as being mature enough to have experienced life enough to make such a statement. She's just saying it to sound grown up when she really wasn't. Emotionally that is.
Nothing I saw leads me to believe that she was trying to bring Bill and Miriam together. Why would she? How and where did she get the insight at 12yrs old to see that Miriam would be better off by leaving her husband and son to live with some other guy. That don't make any kind of sense to me.
She seemed too boastful about her own supposed experience. emotional and otherwise.
And I think that Miriam stayed out on the water hoping that Livia would get worse. Why else would Andre lie to the Doctor? He knew it too.
The letter was written to her friend Gunda. (really,the letter was written by the writers of the film). It doesn't sound like Livia at all.
And tell me,even with the supposed knowledge of Livia's "plan", you don't see it anywhere in the film. Without the letter,you'd never have thought that at all.
Liquor & Whores,Bitches!
I Kill Kids!
But you do have the letter. It's not a forgery.
There are no good guys in this movie. All the characters are flawed, and face significant consequences for their flawed behavior. This is a critique of moral ambivalence and lack of self knowledge. Perhaps only Livia and perhaps the son have any real grasp of ethics, however tenuous.
The ending is very gray. You can read it as they're clearly not happy, but I don't think that's exactly right. They are together. I think they're together for the reason that couples are actually together rather than the way that 12 year olds think that they're together. So that's interesting too.
On the subject of murder vs. no. That's gray too. Perhaps at a subconscious level, but nothing overt.
The biggest knife wielding moment is Miriam's seduction scene. She's irredeemable from that point. The rest of the tragedy follows. It's also the least believable moment in the film. Such it is with all tragedy. Why does Lear fly off the handle at Cordelia? Gotta get the ball rolling somehow.
Nicely said.
I Kill Kids!
I must have read it in another frame of mind there were several things I really never understood. From what was her real problem with her husband other than she did not want him anymore
She left her own son and did not seem to be in his life anymore.
All said to the husband is you are good but she leaves anyway.
We never really saw what she seen in the guy other than a good lay.
Just what type of woman still wants a guy after he makes it clear he does not want her at all and is in love with a teenager.
How is it she can live so easily knowing what happened to the girl.
I did find it hard to believe after all was said the lover did not think back of her dying to end his love for her Mirian will go back to being second.
Why was the husband so gun-ho about not saying what he thought really happened.
On were they truly happy after the sex I feel the novelty wore off he was probably no better or worse than than her husband because of why she actually left. there was no substance so all in all she was going through the motions.
Just saw this movie the other day.
I must say the ending came as a complete letdown for me. As someone else has also remarked, at no time during the movie did you get any sense or clue or indication that Livia was trying to be a matchmaker between Bill and Miriam. The letter just felt completely out of context, and hence there is no Big Reveal in the last scene.
The fact that Bill and Miriam are still together, at that point some 3-4 years after the death of Livia, also was highly questionable, as that relationship already looked pretty much over. Yet somehow Miriam leaves her husband and her 15 yr. old son for Bill.
It's a disappointing finish to what otherwise was a movie that kept me guessing on how it would all play out.