That just seems cruel to me. The lady knew she was dying; she had plenty of time to get rid of pictures and e-mails on her computer that would break her husband's heart.
I can't imagine doing that to someone you love. Cheating in the first place, then making sure he knows about it makes it even worse.
I believe, as you noticed from the beginning, she'd been trying to tell him the truth for a long time. I think it was both guilt and the fact that she had always wanted to tell the man she'd married the truth. She knows it'll hurt him but she feels he has the right to know and by doing it the way she did, she left it to him to either delete the folder, think it was full of photos of them, or do what he did, persist with it.
Millions of people cheat, why and what for, each and every one is for a different reason. What they do and why, is anyone's guess and I think that showed in her actions with both men.
~ My Voting History ~ http://tinyit.info/602
I agree with the OP. If you're going to cheat, and you don't have the stones to tell your spouse, then you should not have them find out by finding love letters, electronic or otherwise, pictures, etc. It was cruel and cowardly of her to let him find out that way.
"Level head? I think mine's level, and yours is the one things would roll off of."
[deleted]
I sometimes wonder did I see a different movie than most other viewers.....She did not expect him to go thru all he went thru to find the info on what she did. She only wanted him to know about Lake Cuomo and that was it. He would not have even known of that if his daughter had not said something. Are some of you forgetting how he found the info. It was almost a miracle. She wanted him to find out that her place of happiness was simply different then what he wrote down to anger him or sort of throw him of gaurd so he would leave his daughter alone because he did not approve of her boyfriend. This was why the daughter was so upset with him. she knew what her mother was trying to do and when peter kept trying to take it to the next level she could not stop him. It was right after the conversation with the daughter that she set her plan in motion, after her death he would have nothing to do but get into her the daughter's personal business and she was trying to help her daughter for [her last] motherly act..... She stated over and over in the film she loved him and would not leave him. She did not even contact her lover for months sort of unofficially breaking it off, It was almost a year since she spoke to Ralph. She must have started not answering his calls and e-mails. Remember when the lover said when are you happiest she replied that it was while she was with him, she promptly said afterwords that when i go home then i will be the happiest there. And i believe she said that to only appease the immature Ralph did you notice the long hesitation... She said Ralph was starting to scare her, thinking she would leave peter when she told him where she was happiest, and made it clear she loved her husband and was not going to leave him. This is where i believe she stopped answering his E-mails and returning his phone calls. So of course she would not hurt him in the manner in witch some of you are implying. It was simply giving him a tidbit {lake Cuomo} trying to confuse him and keep his mind occupied by giving him something where he could not figure out the answer. It could have been anything as far as Peter was concerned. He became obsessed. Witch I don't believe she thought he would have gone that far. She did not delete the info because she may have simply wanted to view her life with Ralph, and her family, don't forget most of the info and pictures were of Peter and her daughter. She looked at them up until she died for comfort and just simply did not get around to deleting them. She was bad for the affair but not that bad as to torture Peter in this manner. the photos were well hidden so there was no great urgency to erase a great time she had for nothing.
shareI kinda think she stopped replying cause she had cancer not cause she wanted to break things off with him
shareEither way she did not care enough to talk to someone whom by Ralph's account and her saying she fell in love with and slept with him. I would think you in your dying days would at least want to see someone who meant so much to you. She may have stopped communicating with him right after he got angry at her saying he wanted her with him. Since she knew she was not leaving her husband she may have let the affair fade. Remember, Ralph had not even knew she was sick and had past. Though you may be right, I would think she sort of ended it with him by not communicating.....There are a couple of inconsistencies on just how much she told Ralph about Peter and her life. I don't ever remember Ralph even knowing she had a daughter. It is hard to believe if he loved her as much as he says he did he would have not found out enough to contact her. They were together by Ralph's account for over nine or ten years. He could not have meant that much to her especially when she saw him only a couple of times a year and maybe some years none at all. also remember she would not talk to peter about the affair as not to hurt him, she may have did the same thing to Ralph by not telling him she was through with him or she had cancer. This is also why i believe Ralph, just the way he was so phony and lying about so much may have been exaggerating on what he told peter. You can tell he knows nothing about her From his eulogy to her. In the photo's you would be able to tell the age difference when someone is ten years younger, she looked as if the photos were taken the day before not ten years ago. If she ended it because she had cancer it would still not explain why she did not contact him since she would not have had to say anything about it. as in previous years. I am just trying to get some posters to see this movie differently then what it may have seemed. The directors really chopped this movie up pretty bad. Taking a great story and making a complete fiasco out of it. I had to watch the film several times to come up with so much that was miss interpreted by so many. it is actually a great story once you look at it from Lisa's point of view.
shareI just watched the movie and have been reading the comments in here.
It's a strange movie in many ways.
First of all - I never knew Antonio Banderas was just so short! (5'8") Liam just towered over him at his listed 6'4". ;-)
But understanding the wife character is really the hard part. She certainly did keep hinting to her husband SHE was cheating. No doubt about that. But he was a "smug bastard" which she called him on when she was sick.
Did her affair mean much to her? Was it possible she refused surgery (assuming breast cancer and mastectomies here) because then Ralph wouldn't have wanted her body anymore? Was the woman that insecure? The evidence in the movie is - yes.
I think she was both insecure and then hateful at the end. She was angry she was dying and also angry her husband never "picked up" that another many had her. She wanted to hurt him because of her own guilt and the fact she would NOT give up her very comfortable material life with her husband for the man she was so "passionately in love with" - except she wasn't. That was her own lie to herself to excuse her betrayal of her husband and her daughter - actually squandering monetary assets as well as her time and attention on that other man. Very sad in so many ways. One can NOT "have their cake and eat it too" - and this includes "loving two men equally" (as stated in one of her lies to her daughter). She did NOT love two men equally in her own life and both men actually suffered because of her actions. Poor Ralph may actually have been in love with her - quite hopelessly and degradingly for himself all those years. And she DID seem to have feelings of contempt for her husband because she was "getting away" with her own cheating on him. "He should have felt that!"
And what right does she have to try and manipulate her husband's concern for the welfare of their daughter? At least he had always been faithful to his family - wife AND daughter. I see her manipulation here (as you describe her reasoning for writing down "Lake Como" for her husband) as just more feminine hubris along the lines of "I'm smarter than you because I am a woman! And because I cuckolded you so easily for so long, you stupid, stupid man!"
But who was really the foolish (if not stupid) one here?
I agree with your assessment of the movie. I don't understand why writing down the words "Lake Como" was done to make Peter stop meddling with the daughter. I don't see at all why that would have accomplished that. People can think about two things at once. Anyway, I thought it was just an intentionally cruel last blow to Peter who she resented (even though she said otherwise) for her own reasons--(for not being more like Rafe?) Even if Peter had never found out what the words really meant, it gave her a last mean satisfaction to taunt him with them, or to say, "See, I have a secret."
shareI actually bought the book containing this short story to see if her character/actions/motivation became clearer. But it didn't. The movie really did follow the short story pretty closely.
I have been watching a lot of these kind of movies lately - and another one I have seen recently is the French movie "The Big Picture" based on an American book by the same name. I read THAT book as well because it just does not make sense to me why the young mother of two suddenly just HATES her successful Wall Street lawyer husband and starts having an affair with a "bohemian" neighbor photographer.
These kind of movies just make women seem kind of crazy and totally fickle. (I'd say "whimsical" except they really do seem sadistic in how they treat their men in their lives who they merely deem as having "failed" them, somehow - by being economically successful, working hard, and DARING trying to be a good husband and father.)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1533818/?ref_=rvi_tt
And another movie called "After Sex - Sad Animal"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119923/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Try watching the movie CLOUD 9, a woman who was married for thirty years start a sexual relationship with guy from the word go. She feels guilty about cheating on a man that raised her daughter as his own and despite the daughters advice not to tell him as it would break him she claims she loves him [husband]to much to be deceiving him and tells him about it. She gets mad when he says she was acting like child. She non the less dumps him for a seventy seven year old man. [she was 64 her husband was66] Her husband of thirty years commits suicide. She know realizes what she has done and sobs.
shareThanks for the recommendation. Almost seems TOO depressing for even me. ;-)
I have actually been reading a lot of these kind of stories at Literotica.com
"Loving Wives" category.
Warning: this is primarily an XXX stories site - but there are some really good authors and stories here with some sex spelled out - but not just mindless porn.
I've even started writing a few stories myself - with over 20,000 reads on a couple in 10 days. The voting and comments are both interesting.
DanielQsteele, FrancisMcComber, QHMl1 are a couple of the better authors in that category.
I'll check it out, if you get to the film I recommend let me know what you think about it by private mess. I'll do the same With yours.
shareShe wanted him to find it so he'll want to forget about her and move on.
Paybacks are a Behar!
If she wanted him to find it then why did he almost have a nervous breakdown trying to find it, and a minor miracle to get in to it. There were other things on the computer besides her affair such as her daugther's and Peters pictures there is no need to delete something if you feel it can't be found. She wanted to look at the things that made her happy up until she pasted. Not for him to find out her life of betrayal and turn him into a wreck......You also say she wanted him to forget her just how would a man in love with his wife for twenty five years forget what he found out and quickly move on it would have most likely put him in a nuthouse or gave him a heart attack or he could have found Ralph and killed him. This theory just does not add up in any way some of you need to rewatch the movie......................... This theory is written in the review section and is why so many poster did not understand the movie. To that reviewer that it seemed logical but that person missed clues as did you and I at least on first viewing. It is a theory that does not even make any sense.
shareShe wanted the two loves of her life to meet. She knew they would like each other in the end.
sharelucad_99 wrote:
She wanted the two loves of her life to meet. She knew they would like each other in the end.
She knew she was dying and she did what she wanted to do and she left her life up on the screen because to erase it would mean that it never existed, that she never existed. And her answer to "can one person really love 2 people" was yes.
"Let's have some yum yums, I've made snacks"... Dane Cook
Jesus. I can't believe how people can watch a movie and totally fail to understand it. She left the data for the same reason she left him the password. She wanted him to know and to come to grips with it. She wanted him to understand her and to become able to let go of her. He even says at the end "I guess she really knew me" or something like that.
"I'll book you. I'll book you on something. I'll find something in the book to book you on."
Boy did you miss a lot, She did not leave him a password He had a melt down because he did not understand the note, he was not aware it was meant to get him off her daughter back temporairily or long enough for him to accept her boyfriend. Her daughter was the target NOT Peter. She would not have know how he would have reacted to the confession he could have killed Ralph or had a heart attack. really think about your post and how someone would feel all the piecess would fall into place just because you left some photos and e mails NO one could even dream of such a plan.
she loved Peter she would not do that to him. your answer is the one that makes no sense. In the restaurant she was trying to tell him she was dying and he would get the chance to love again and taste another woman as she did with Ralph [not I have been having an affair and I need you to get with another woman as in as csoon as possible, that makes no sense].and her love for him was her concern because she wanted him to move on not from her having an affair but her concern that she wanted him to be happy after she passed it basically had nothing to do with Ralph. At the end he says that to the daughter because he felt if it came to light he would have been able to handle it and there was no need to go to her grave in a sad and heavy handed way of carry such a tremendous burden of guilt and betrayal. She would have passed knowing he would have forgave her.
The "Lake Como" note was most certainly left for Peter. She told her daughter to put it in her red shoe and was confident he would find it. She wanted him to know about the other man she loved. It is what the filmmaker intended.
Nevertheless, it was a somewhat confusing, odd, dull movie. I will not watch again.
"Don't get chumpatized!" - The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)
she said she would tell her husband and therefore was not hiding anything because she wanted him to find out eventually. And maybe she may have not had time since she fell ill
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