My theory on what happened to Kristen Swerat

I just finished watching this. I was wondering about that. Great suggestion, one I hadn't thought of. Or if she was real, did she disappear only to reinvent herself? I like that, open for interpretation.

I wondered that during the entire time.

it doesn't make sense to me that Val would be an imaginary character because then the whole movie becomes an hallucination and all the scenes involving the two of them and the rest of the world....are negated. But it is irritating that Val's departure and its impact on Maria are not addressed. Did Assayas not know how to write that scene? In the film's epilogue several weeks after Val disappears, Maria has a new PA and appears indifferent to Val being gone. Hey, she was replaceable! Is Assayas conveying that Maria is a narcissist and Val was just there to serve her, whereas he seemed to be implying throughout the movie that there was a relationship (emotional) between the two. It's a bit of a cop out.

My other comment is ....what a callous bytch Jo-Ann turned out to be. When Maria asks her to pause during the play, Jo-Ann basically tells her that Maria's character in the play is washed up and the audience wants to see what happens next, i.e. It's all about ME not some old, loser actress. What an insult. It tells us that all the flattery Jo-Ann laid on Maria when they first met... was all BS.

And this has probably already been mentioned somewhere here, but Kristen Stewart, in real life, fell in love with her own personal assistant. Maybe Assayas can remake this film in 20 years with Kristen Stewart playing Maria. And with a far different outcome.

I don't agree, but I do think that Val represents the Sigrid character. In fact, while watching the movie, there were times I wasn't sure when Maria and Valentine were reading lines from the play, and when they were having regular dialogue as themselves.

I was wondering the same thing.....did Stewart's character even exist?

[deleted]

Valentine and Maria get into an argument just a few scenes before Valentine disappears in the woods regarding the ending of the play that they are working on. The play ends with Helena wandering into the woods never to be seen again. Maria thinks that she clearly wanders off to commit suicide, while Valentine argues that there is no way to know what happens to her, and that maybe she started a new life, reinvented herself, etc.

I took her disappearing in the woods to be directly related to this discussion. Basically Valentine giving the middle finger to Maria. It was a pretty clever way for her to quit, kind of proving her point that someone wandering off in the woods, never to be seen again (by Maria specifically in this instance), isn't as clear of an ending as Maria thought.

While it wouldn't be the first time that the audience is made to discover that a character was all figment of another character's imagination, surely in cases where we see that character in a scene by themselves indicates they are real?

We see Kristen Stewart's Val driving by herself, for example, when she was intending to meet with Berndt. Val even got sick on the journey -- another bit I still don't understand actually.

But I always feel that anytime a movie or TV show gives us a scene where a character is by themselves, doing things and reacting to things, rather than constantly with another character people think is fantasizing the second one, that second one can't be imaginary surely?

If Val WAS real, then the film really poorly addresses any aftermath for Maria -- it's like Val never existed!

And come to think of it, if Val was not real, her disappearance from Maria's need to manifest her also is not addressed. Another fail.