I'm glad this 'review' includes Tom in the picture and not just being an Alice film entirely by saying "... one needing to make a change in his life, the other questioning how to stop changing."
What I wanted to get a sense of is what would trigger someone, apparently with means to do this as we all someone not monied could not, do this? What emotional injury would force you to give up, in this case, the piano which would in every sense of the word take her all the places she went and given her purpose she seemed to crave, because of what? She says hates her name? Not close to her mother? Why isn't she close to her? Are we to default to her wanting to make a change every time she feels she's 'nailed' another personality? It's psychotic and neurotic to be polite. Her apparent ability to compartmentalize her life and lie to people who trust her is offensive, mental, and yet, because she's easy on the eyes, has the apparent aptitude to adapt, we're to give her a pass at hurting people she lets in temporary? Who is it that throws away friends? Someone who feels they can find more elsewhere.
Ironically this is what actors do. They create a soul for a character based on the ideas presented them by the script-writer, director, etc, then dive into it, both do this well, by the way, only to complete the project and move on. And that, at least, doesn't hurt anyone, involve other people, get them to like, trust, confide in, allow you in their lives, then, poof, disappear. I found her psychotic, and unpleasantly so. She's a serial something. But what?
Is she capable of love? What if, in a 'new' life, she falls for someone? Or someone for her? I suspect that would trigger her flight, but what if she found someone who needs her and she needs them? Or is she that fractured mentally? And, again, why?
GFW
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Rob-O-Cop
7 years ago
The money thing isn't necessarily an issue for the lifestyle, other than one of scope. In this movie she moves between countries, so that's the price of a train ticket and and relocation, but I know people who did this on normal money levels and just move to another city, another suburb of a big city, or another circle of people that don't know the other circle you have an identity in to reinvent themselves.
All it takes is an isolated cell of people to pull it off, and our society is a lot more isolated than we think. I've seen multiple identities pulled off in the same city.
I read her as more sick than psychotic. I felt sorry for her. I read it as impulsive, something she couldn't help or stop, or understand, she was just propelled by it and was a passenger on something she didn't know how to control.
I feel there's a sort of autistic level to it. A distanced lack of empathy. She's not malicious in it, she just doesn't see it in the same way, doesn't see the damage she's doing as she bowls through lives.
As for the why. I don't know. I didn't see any real life issues that would case it, no horrible home life and family, no poverty, no known trauma. Much like Alice's life it offered no insight as to the why, it just is like that.
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!!!deleted!!! (67791493)
7 years ago
Maybe "What for?" is a better question. And while I get the OCD-type compulsive obsessive bit she is far more rational than she lets on. I don't think she's on the Autism continuum. She's just very into herself and it doesn't, to me, appear DNA-related. There is something beyond the physical need to bolt, something psychological, that triggers her starting to do this and wanting not to stop. She could if she wanted to IMO. It's all choice. So was it a psychotic break? Triggered by what? It all started in her 20s, right, so maybe it's like schizophrenia?
Fact of the matter is, we're focusing on what, most likely, the film-maker didn't want, the why's she doing this. That it's about the two main characters, not just her.
You know the cake bit bothered me. His wife said she should have returned it or something. To me, that was a flare that the marriage was a tad rockier than either knew. That Tom's story is as important as Alice's.
GFW
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