(Some spoilers)
At first I thought she'd be brave, fight for her beliefs whatever...but it never happened.
The way she was jealous about Anne's new love left me wondering if she had any romantic feelings for her "sister/best friend", especially because there was a close of her hands in the boat scene, I guess. She also had no interest in her friend conversation about honey moon, Anne knew she'd eventually marry someone she didn't love but was still interested somehow. She also burnt Jean's picture.
Or maybe she was just jealous of Anne actually having feelings, Therese had never experienced such thing. She seemed interested in Jean when they meet and I thought she'd perhaps have an affair...but it didn't happen as well.
I think Jean was just that, had some fun with Anne and quickly lost interest in Therese letters for her own frustration. She thought highly of herself, a complex mind, even said they all, husband and family, were simple souls unlike her.
But above all she had a terrible case of apathy. Why not simply try to run? Escape before the wedding, anything? Why resort to trying to kill her husband? He wasn't the worst person around, after all...I even sympathize for him, I couldn't like Therese, there was nothing likable about he.
By the end of the movie she said she felt like a character on his story...but after some time she realized that being the proud wife of a Desqueyroux was also part of her, who she was. She couldn't explain herself clearly not because he was a simpleton that wouldn't understand; but the fact that she was an enigma even to herself.
At least she cared a little about her daughter Marie, but I wasn't so sure she would be happy in Paris. It felt as she was about to be disappointed again, to discover that the city life would just be as unhappy and unfulfilling as her "family life". It also looked like she was afraid, or regretting it all.
I don't know, maybe this movie was to show how she got depressed after being forced into a life she didn't want making her ultimately apathetic, murderous, insane, depressed and suicidal(I think she was about to poison herself before hearing about her aunt's death, maybe thinking she was above others was also a symptom of bipolar disorder, she displayed symptoms of catatonic-depression as well).
She seemed happy as a teen...could they suck life out of her this way? If she was so intelligent, intellectual, libertarian why she didn't find a way? Kinda felt more like a chemical problem, one that some nowadays pills + some therapy would help, if anything at least she could recover motivation to actually try something other than killing her husband.
So my conclusion is, being forced into a marriage/life you don't want could be severely damaging, especially for someone with undiagnosed mental disorder and psychological problems in a decade that treatments were far less effective(or inexistent) and some conditions wasn't even properly researched or discovered.
Yeah, I guess I can feel pity for her now...and somehow I still think Bernard would accept her back not for hypocrisy, but the way Gilles played him seemed like he had some genuine affection for her.
I wish someone that read the novel would clarify more about the story and characters for us.
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