How is this suppose to be good thing? Just as much as unfaithful. It seems we all think SHE is the victim of it all. Soo I guess there is no such thing as marraige and faith. Just do whatever you "feel" like doing...granted that...the movie was still nicely shot, just the topic is absurd.
shareI too thought it was a LOT like "Unfaithful", just with the ethnic issue added (and no murder). But still well done and acted. I do not think she is portrayed as a victim -- her defiant stare at the camera at the end supports that this was all about her choices and her actions.
shareI too thought this was similiar to Unfaithful if not a copycat version in some scenes. She looks alot like Claire Forlani.
" Benny, you silly great fat article"
Her husband was the victim. When push came to shove, she had absolutely no regard for him. Her constant whining that she loves her husband is bull.
shareHer husband was withdrawn from her and wanted to kill himself. She tried to save her marriage, but what else could she do? She was mechanical at first with her "sperm donor" but then she discovered that she should accept her feminine sexuality and not be an automaton trying to just get knocked up. The immigrant arose passion in her, but it had to end tragically because some things are not meant to be. There are all kinds of reasons why people cheat; sometimes you have to accept it or walk away from the relationship.
shareSo in the end Sophie gets everything she wanted. New lover, exciting new country to live in, and two children. In the meantime, her ex-hub is left empty handed. That's some backwards thinking. Don't get me wrong, it's an intriguing story and well acted, but it's a story that makes me roll my eyes and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
share"What else could she do?"
Well, maybe, stick to a commitment through the worst of times. Unfashionable, yes. Terribly self-denying, even.
Till death do us part?
I don't see why Vera's character is anymore guilty of not keeping her commitment than her husband.
Sure she cheated on him and even left him in the end as a consequence, but lets not forget that her husband tried TO KILL HIMSELF. Which meant he had absolutely NO regard towards her feelings, or her welfare and how she'd deal with it. Where was his commitment? His for better or for worse? He left her just as much, if not more, than she left him in the end.
What would you do in the situation? If your husband/wife just tried killing themselves and would be likley to do it again and succeed when you know the sole reason is that you're not conceiving? She loved her husband, she wanted him to live. So her only solution was to get pregnant somehow, to give him something to live for.
Did you see how suddenly absolutely happy and ecstatic he was once he found out she was pregnant? Complete 180 wasn't it? He was just fine then, no more melodrama or suicidal tendencies. Healed in the span of the 4.7 seconds it took for her to tell him she was pregnant. It's a miracle.
It made it really obvious that he cared more about having a child and pleasing his family more than he cared about her.
With her and childless = I want to kill myself..
With her and w/child = I suddenly want to live!
If you want to paint Vera's character a monster, then you'd have to paint her husband the same shade...
There's no victim here.
I actually think that's a good take on it. Doesn't really excuse infidelity, and I still think infidelity is treated in mass culture and mass media almost like no worse than having a hot fudge sundae when you really shouldn't--I could give you a hundred examples a week just from network TV where faithfulness is treated as completely disposable at whim (or as a complete joke)--but these other elements you're pointing out are analyzed in a damned cogent way, and you're right to say it's more complex than "adulteress, she's wrong, he's not, simple as that."
share@StarryNight51787: Very well stated. That's how I saw it as well.
Additionally, her husband was trying to force her to abort...yet, in that scene, we never heard her utter a hurtful word about his sperm infertility, which initiated the whole situation, and her quest to help him out of his suicidal world and make him a father. Apparently, living for her was not enough for him.
Sophie's emotional and intimate needs were not attended to by her husband. So when she was selflessly trying to get pregnant for her husband's happiness - if he knew his sperm was no good, he would've completely freaked - she inadvertently fell in love along the way...because she was finally being truly loved. If one has never experienced selfless love, they may find that it's worth starting over in some ways. Life is short.
"Don't get chumpatized"! -The King of Kong (2007)
Seriously are you people ethical retards? From a serious point of view, not an insult. As it amazes me people have become morally so confused and grey that they can actually side with the woman in this whole story.
What happened to all the marriage vows people take, about thick and thin, honor and love, or is that just for the neighbors. Is marriage just a case of making oneself happy these days, forget the spouse, he is just a means to making oneself happy to you people?
Her husband tried to commit suicide so that gives her the right to betray him, haves sex with someone else, get pregnant by someone else, pass it off as his, to cure him? And that somehow is considered to be an unselfish act of helping him, honoring him? Is everyone's moral compass broken or something?
Do you seriously believe that ********.
Th next time you girls (am assuming only girls can be so naive to actually think cheating is OK so long as its out of "LOVE") have a period of selfishness, will you be OK with your boyfriends/husband having sex with another girl in order to make you happy, to save your relationship.
Say your selfish whining, withholding of sex etc etc is driving him insane to the point where he thinks he is going to divorce you. So instead he decides, let me go bang some chicks on the side, she'll never know, and that way he can toughen it out until she gets over it, and thereby save your marriage.
Would you be OK with that? oh no, why not, whats the difference. She cheat to save her marriage (not her husband obviously - as if she really cared about her husband she would not have disgraced him like that and left him so easily when she found someone else better FOR HER), and here your husbands are also doing same thing, cheating to save your marriage. After all I'm sure your cheating boyfriend/husband only did it, because he loves you, and was only thinking about making it work and keeping you. No don't believe that, why the double standards?
Like something like that actually exists, its an oxymoron. Only a person who does not care about their spouses cheats on them in such a manner, they can cover it up by lying to themselves with unselfish reasoning like trying to save the marriage, but it is always about selfishness when it comes to cheating. Its always about, "I'M" happier or "I AM" going to be happier by being unfaithful to my spouse. That is all she cared about, even if she and everyone else can cover that up by saying she was only doing it for her husband. As obvious by her leaving him.
Whilst her husband was going through a tough time, being male, traditional family male and impotent, can be tough on a guy. Yet all you people can think about is how it was affecting the wife, the wife? Oh the tragedy, the husband is going through some serious issues and all anyone can think about it, is how it is affecting the wife?
Its like if a man ever had cancer, all you would be thinking about is how it was affecting the wife. A husband gets run over, damn that man for inconveniencing his wife by becoming paralyzed. A police husband gets shot, damn that fool for ruining the wife's life by being shot. The husband is the one suffering, not the wife.
Morality has never been about happiness, yours, theirs, wife's, husband's, or anyone else's for that matter. Morality has and always will be about doing the right thing, irrespective of who it makes happy or not makes happy. Doing evil to a jerk, is still doing evil and that makes the doer worse than their victim (no matter how unlikable they are).
The right thing was to stand by her husband, and help him get over his depression over his inability to have children, maybe talk to him about adoption, get him mentally sound and healthy again. Not to go behind his back and cheat on him to make herself happy by creating her perfect life, at his expense, and then send him spiraling into even more mental chaos. So now not only is the husband a failure to his parents, he is also feeling like a failure to his wife who went and slept with another man to be happy. Kick a man when he is down, and by the wife of all people doing the kicking, adding insult on top of injury.
If she was unable to stand by her husband, then she should have got a divorce and then jumped in the sack with the illegal immigrant or whoever else she wants to that she wants to be happy with. At that point it would not have been cheating and betraying her husband. Something like that would probably send a someone who attempted suicide into probably carrying it out, instead of merely using it as a cry for help.
Okay, not to insult you personally, but your post is one big non sequitur. Let's first establish some ground rules.
Marriage has been viewed as a contract since Immanuel Kant. In a contract, both parties are expected to give and to receive. Now, what if one party fails to deliver? What does traditional morality and Western legal rules tell us? Well, it depends on the gravity of the failure. If the failure is grave enough, the marriage is said to be null and even within the Catholic tradition, which has the most stringent rules governing separation of married couples, the non-breaching spouse is permitted to leave.
Grounds of nullity varies across religious denominations and secular jurisdictions. However, impotence is ground for nullification in every major religious and legal tradition.
Thus, the mere fact that Mr. Lee is impotent has already rendered him unfit to be a husband, giving his wife every right, religious, moral or legal, to leave him.
Okay, so far you're following me, right?
Moreover, let's take a look at his suicide at the beginning. You said, "Her husband tried to commit suicide so that gives her the right to betray him?" I assume it was meant to be sarcastic and a rhetorical question. However, let me respond to it, the answer must be, from a moral perspective, a RESOUNDING YES. By attempting suicide, her husband has betrayed his family, his spouse, his parents and his God. Suicide is the only mortal sin, the sin against the Holy Spirit, if you must, that cannot be cured or undone by definition. By committing suicide, her husband has unilaterally dissolved the bond of matrimony beteen the two.
This, of course, would serve as additional ground for separation.
Finally, there is the issue of forced abortion and the physical violence. The invasion of the physical person of a spouse constitutes ground for divorce in all jurisdictions that do NOT recognize no fault divorce.
Are you satisfied now? Now, take a deep breath, and think through it before you respond. Thank you very much.
leojbramble on Thu Jul 24 2008 21:47:16 Yeah, production values were fine, but the story didn't do it for me either. First, I don't at all buy the guy's entire desire to live hinging on whether or not he has a kid. Successful career? Check. Beautiful wife? Check. Beautiful home? Check. Strong (if slightly overbearing) family and spiritual support structure? Check. But his sperms are duds and adopting is somehow out of the question, so he tries to KILL himself? Jeez, dude, maybe you need a shrink more than a kid. So I don't get her being so in love with such an emotionally unhinged and unresponsive dude. But then on top of that, she falls in love with this twenty-something deliveryboy? Why? Because he briefly gives her a shoulder to cry on after the one 2-minute half-conversation they've ever had? A conversation about how much she loves her husband, at that? Let's see... uninteresting, unsuccessful, monosyllabic, not particularly good looking illegal immigrant with a grungy apartment? What a catch! I didn't give a lick about any of them. Granted, she started the relationship to save the husband, but given her prior willingness to abort her own husband's child -- a once in a lifetime opportunity, as it later turns out -- her subsequent revulsion at the very IDEA of aborting the illicitly-conceived child was a pretty nasty slap in the face in its own way. Ah, to hell with the lot of them.
good summary by leojbramble of the whole stupidity of this film and everyone who seems to have fallen for this Hollywood, cheating is so pure and lovely propaganda. If any of the people who are siding with Vera, were in her husbands role, none of them would be saying all this new age romance stuff of beautiful, I'm so happy for her and so on.
and i think it was damned convenient that the script called for her husband to suddenly get dangerously physical with her...
share[deleted]
The other selfish thing about her husband is he refused other donor's sperm. Why?
I do understand that is is hurtful to a man's pride that his child is not HIS child. In fact neither my brother nor my BIL would accept donor sperm for their in vitro babies.
This makes no sense to me, when the alternative is to remain childless and unhappy. Once his wife became impregnated, it's not like he had to tell the world that it wasn't him.
His pride could have remained intact.
Of course it is ironic that until he found out that the baby wasn't his, what didn't know didn't hurt him.
It was hypocritical that the Christian asked her to abort. Kinvduv like a reverse Michael Corleone, as it were.
Saranghe
Her husband was the victim. When push came to shove, she had absolutely no regard for him. Her constant whining that she loves her husband is bull.Amen to that. I stopped rooting for her predicament the minute she went back and slept with Jihah AFTER she became pregnant. This was one MESS of a message, as far as I'm concerned. Her happiness? Who gives a hoot? She deserves bad things to happen to her for the bad things she did to her husband and her marriage. She's no hero in my book. I was actually thinking that while she was knitting at the end, preoccupied and self-absorbed as her character was throughout the entire movie, that suddenly June would disappear in the ocean and end up drowning, causing her to suffer immense pain. (Not that I wanted anything bad to happen to June; more that I wanted something really bad to happen to her that would cause her immeasurable grief.)
I don't necessarily think we're supposed to believe that she is the victim or that her husband is the victim. I really dislike it when people see a film in black and white. Life isn't black and white, and neither was this film.
At the beginning, I did feel a little sorry for Sophie. She was basically having sex with a stranger to bring her husband happiness and give him a reason to live. I also felt sorry for her because, at times, it seems like her identity is totally ignored. She doesn't "know how to pray," isn't even religious, but she has to go to church every Sunday morning? Like her husband says, she's the most selfless person he knows. She basically lives for other people.
I thought the husband's breakdown was a little crazy at the end of the film. Yes, he's a selfish person. He tries to take his own life, which is the ultimate selfish act. But I didn't think he'd go homicidal and try to throw his wife down the stairs.
The point is, they're both flawed characters. Do I think his flaws excuse her infidelity? No... But I've grown away from thinking that infidelity makes a person absolutely evil. In many cases, men and women do have affairs simply because they're selfish people who love the excitement of it all. The other side is that it takes two to make a marriage work. When you have a selfish spouse coupled with a selfless spouse... One could argue that Sophie was a doormat in the relationship. When she's talking about things she wants, all she says is that she wants the people close to her to be happy. I thought, by the end of the film, she had finally found what made HER happy and was living for herself. It doesn't excuse her actions, but to classify either her or her husband as the victim is shallow, in my opinion.
Call me Katie. ;-)
I think some are mistaking this film for a morality play when it's a bildungsroman.
I agree that "to classify either her or her husband as the victim is shallow" because that is not what the movie is about: the morals or the ethics.
The movie doesn't give a crap.
It's a coming-of-age film for Sophie as she grows from a selfless, identity-less creature who lives for others, into a happy, confident woman and mother.
How she goes about it is immaterial; the important part is that at the end of the film she's a person who can tell her husband "no," this isn't working and I need something for myself (the baby, in this case) and then be perfectly happy without either lover on the beach, when at the beginning she was catering to both husband and in-laws to the loss of self.
The film is about going from unhappy to happy, weak to strong, not good to evil, nor pure to corrupt, so it really doesn't matter who betrayed who in their marriage vows. Sophie could have ended up as a hooker and it wouldn't have mattered as long as she emerged a complete and happy person.
Unfaithful is one of my favourite films and I *definitely* saw the similarities between Never Forever and Unfaithful. It didn't lessen Never Forever's quality though! Still thought it was fantastic.
shareyes the film makers message is clear and worst selfish view
simply it is
" do whatever Your sex drive point to You it does not matter if You are married but love cheating then go for it if You wana leave and make sex do it .. final message sex and Your desire is above everything including family and religion and morals any any thing come below Your desires "
it is very very sick movie
how can as i audience to feel sympathy with this character obviously she keep making the wrong choice all the way and hurt people around her due to her wrong actions and the solution the film makers gave us and her is
" F..K them all and long live the dirt inside You tell You "
The husband was the biggest victim in this movie. The victim of really bad writing. A strong, successful man tries to kill himself just because he can't have a child? If you know the culture, that child is for his parents to be proud of most of all. So even when he found out his wife was carrying another man's child, hey, a typical man in that situation would still want to keep the child to make his parents happy.