MovieChat Forums > Nancy, Please (2012) Discussion > Enjoyable movie even if flawed by weak c...

Enjoyable movie even if flawed by weak characters... (spoilers)

posted 11 years ago by Corrette
3 replies | jump to latest

I have to admit that I enjoyed this film, although the ending really annoyed me. Practically all of the characters, but especially Paul, are incredibly weak, and leave us trying to work out the reasons for their weird behaviour:
Why did Paul continue to go after Nancy once Jen had managed to get the book back?
Why did Paul give Nancy extra money, and his jacket (!!!) after confronting her outside the restaurant (instead of breaking her jaw)?
Why didn't Paul try to blackmail Nancy, or something similar, after pocketing her nude photos? (otherwise, what was the point of letting us see the photos??)
Why couldn't Paul have bought another copy of Little Dorrit and made notes in that one? If he had already discussed the outline and objectives of his dissertation with his supervisor, and if he knew what his arguments were etc., this would not have been so difficult (I have lost several very important drafts of papers, but managed to remember/reconstruct my notes when looking at the original source material).
If the book was so important to Paul, whay wasn't it the first thing he packed when moving, or why didn't he keep it with him? I cannot understand how it got left behind, as if it were some sort of optional accessory.
Why did Jen's support for Paul dwindle as the story progressed? She must have realised how important the book was for him. It's true that she eventually got the book back from Nancy, but couldn't she have done this sooner?
What was Nancy's motive for keeping the book? And why didn't she initially want to give it to Jen (especially since we had been led to believe that there were no sentimental ties with Paul)? We are not told what really happened in that scene.
Why couldn't Paul have gone to the restaurant to reason with Nancy at the start? Why couldn't he have explained to his university supervisor what was happening? (maybe she would have been willing to approach Nancy on Paul's behalf).
Were the squirrel scenes really necessary, other to point out that Paul didn't really attempt to resolve the situation with the landlord, just as he didn't arrange to have the electricity account transferred to the new address?
As you can see, the film poses more questions than it raises. Perhaps I'm taking a much too simplistic view of the plot, because human behaviour is anything but predictable in certain situations. But I personally felt frustrated with the characters because I was hoping right up until the end that they would have reacted differently.
I'd like to know what YOU think of this film!!

[–] paumai 11 years ago

I'm french.
It's not weak character. I mean, yes they are weak, but it does not mean it's not good character. You have to (sorry for the pretentious ton of my answer) realize that Nancy is a metaphor of neurosis. And a specific neurosis.
(http://fr.scribd.com/doc/34058295/Karen-Horney-Neurosis-and-Human-Growth Look the chapter Neurotic disturbance in work on the self-effacing character.)
On this basis we can say that the writer did a good job with the character. (i think it lack a lot of substance)

I was like Paul. I couldn't write my master thesis (it was in philosophy). I always need a book (oh i can't write because i didn't read this book, and this one, and this one etc etc). Or couldn't concentrate.
In three years, i only write ten pages and had to drop college without finishing it...
You have to understand that the book is just a pretext for Paul to not write his thesis. There is a moment in the film that, i think explain why. It's when Paul go to speak at Nancy place in her frontdoor (43min) :
Paul : "I want you to know that i dispise you, i disliked you the first time i met you because your hair is stringy, and you smell weird. But the more i got to know you, the more i came to understand that there is something willfully hostile about the way that you interact with people. And that all the things that make you unnattractive and grating, are the result of deliberate choices, and that you make those choices because you are a worthless despicable *beep*
I think we should take those words not against Nancy but are what Paul think about himself. Deep down he thinks he is a "worhless despicable *beep* and nothing good can come from him. That's why he can write.

So, let's take a jungian way to see the movie and the concept of Anima.
For Jung, the Anima is known as the "woman inside each man". Jung understood the Anima as the feeling function of the psyche. But it's not only the feeling fonction, oppose to the intellect (during all the film Paul is using reason against Nancy, which is unreasonable), it's also the structure in the mind that do the mediation between the unconscious and the concious.
To said it simple, the anima is the function that make content pass through the inconscious into the conscious.
In the movie there is two Anima, a positive one (his girlfriend) and a negative one (Nancy)
In the case of Paul, his negative Anima don't do what she has to do. Which is passing unconscious content to the conscious (she keep the book).
The movie is essentialy the struggle of Paul againt his neurosis. His problem is not that he can't write, it's that is psyche don't work anymore (i had the same problem, i couldn't make the link between things, my memorie wasn't working well etc).
Now you have three stage of his struggle :

-He tries to speak reasonably with Nancy, didn't work.
-He force is way through the neurosis (entering nancy home. He is beaten hard. (the more i try to fight my neurosis, the more she was violent, i was more agressiv, more anxious etc etc). But he still fight after that.
-The ending at the restaurant where the neurosis definitivly win. She explain her rule ("if i get attack, i defend myself"). And Paul loose.

I will stop here. There is more to it. I wonder what the skirel and the coackroach in the cofee mean.

[–] orangeandyellow 10 years ago

thank you for this.

i am still not sure if the filmmakers were really as clever as you are giving them credit for or if you are using your own intellect to make them seem so.... but at least i don't feel as disgruntled about spending 90 minutes of my life watching this. so thank you!!

[–] AmbientD2 8 years ago

Corrette,
If he didn't leave the book, then they couldn't have the movie being obsessed about getting the book back. 

You should always take a bath or a shower in the morning if your going to be around people. Not doing that is unnatural. A scene from the movie.

Finished this movie and IMHO, it wasn't about a book. It was about finally facing lost of control on his life. Paul had two years to finish his dissertation. He was never going to finish the paper and it was easy to use Nancy as an excuse of why he couldn't finish and the people around him allowed him. When he moved out of the house he shared with Nancy and all of her quirks, he could no longer lean on Nancy as the problem. He couldn't face that he is a failure in life and his crutch/Nancy was no longer letting him use her as an excuse.

l'll get my cape...
..I wanna put dem paws on him. Dig that..