my guess is yes, it was.
i was actually hoping that his aunt was going to say that no, they were never physically intimate. i thought that would have been a nice ending, even if she was lying (even better if she wasn't)
I think when Colin gave her the big hug, as she was leaving the wake, it was telling us that she was his sister.
shareIt was his half sister. I just read an two articles that were linked in another thread here that says that. It also said that Beaty wasn't really his aunt. I was confused about that when I watched it -- the father playing with his sister or sister-in-law? I don't know how they knew Beaty in the first place. Very strange that it's all out in the open with the wife. No wonder she had migraines.
shareSaying to leave her something private seemed to me to be an admission that they
were intimate, and that it was none of his business. The way he looked at his
cousin when she left seemed to indicate that he was right.
But what was the point in no being explicit for the audience?
Exactly, there should have been something for the audience. I even checked the deleted scenes but nothing. I think the girl was his half-sister but she didn't know it. To have told her at that late date would be cruel, so maybe what Beaty said to Blake in the hall was to leave it alone. I'll bet Beaty's husband didn't know either.
shareI haven't read the story, but...
I may be being naive, since I thought it was entirely too obvious that Beatty's daughter was their half-sister, but I thought the hug at the end showed his relief that she in fact wasn't his sister.
This then set up the following scene, where he was able to see his father in a new light - as a 'stereotypical' boorish, blustering northern man - who in fact wasn't the villain he had imagined all those years, loved him profoundly and just had trouble expressing it. This would make what Beatty said, and his mum earlier in the film, true. That Beatty was miserable and he cheered her up. Through comedy, supportive chat and flirting - but not with an affair... I think this innocent realisation could have the effect of him actually re-discovering his father after having felt cheated that he never got the chance to talk directly to him about it.
Has anyone read the book?
I may be being naive, since I thought it was entirely too obvious that Beatty's daughter was their half-sister, but I thought the hug at the end showed his relief that she in fact wasn't his sister.
This then set up the following scene, where he was able to see his father in a new light - as a 'stereotypical' boorish, blustering northern man - who in fact wasn't the villain he had imagined all those years, loved him profoundly and just had trouble expressing it. This would make what Beatty said, and his mum earlier in the film, true. That Beatty was miserable and he cheered her up. Through comedy, supportive chat and flirting - but not with an affair... I think this innocent realisation could have the effect of him actually re-discovering his father after having felt cheated that he never got the chance to talk directly to him about it.
Beaty and her husband (not their real names, as most in the book/movie are not) were family friends and not related to the Morrisons.
Blake was told, early, that they could not have children and along comes this little girl (Josie) who looked like him and his sister.
To be clear, the "confession/realiztion" actually came through letters but long after the funeral of his dad and near the end of Beaty's life.
It actually took Morrison years to come to terms with his father...through therapy.
It also did not help that his mother, being Irish Catholic in an England that hated Irish Catholics, never told them much about her family. He knew 2 or 3 of her siblings but he only found out, after her death, that she had been 1 of 17 children and made a trip to Ireland to finally meet his relatives he did not know he had. (Book "Things My Mother Never Told Me")
dmdemore
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I think it was his sister, but if Colin didn't have the benefit of proof, why should the audience?
share[deleted]