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KaththeeT (4)
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I think it was just the head and not the entire old lady.
Sorry to necro-post but I just saw the film yesterday. The only sympathetic character was Richard, and Jonathan and they were both dead when the story started, and of course Aunt Gin seemed to have a some common decency. Still not every story has a moral. Some stories show instead of teach. This the story of the coming of age of a sociopathic necrophilic teenage girl. The ending was disturbing as India has surrendered to her true nature. She is walking in her uncle's shoes, literally and figuratively. She has her mother's femininity - the silky lovely blouse she wears and it is all cinched together with her father's belt which probably represents control because that is what he tried to teach her through hunting. "Sometimes we have to do something bad so we won't do something worse."
I found the mother/daughter relationship the most interesting in the story. Evie is a middle aged mother but she represents infantilized femininity. She longs for her daughter's love to fulfill her instead of responding to her daughter needs. Evie doesn't take care of her daughter , instead her daughter cares for her just as the maids said while gossiping. Evie makes her mother's coffee. She brings her mother tea when she is passed out in Richard's study, and when India asks her mother to brush her hair and her mother demurs, India instead brushes her mother's hair. Charlie represents both danger and temptation to Evie. The only act of love Evie really shows for India is when she tells Charlie, "Take me instead," she tells him, "....but leave my daughter alone." Remember this declaration is immediately after Evie had added up warning signs about Charlie that she had ignored earlier. So this represents the only mature act of maternal protectiveness that we see from Evie and of course nothing escapes India's attention. Killing Charlie represents accepting the mother and father who made her and in some ways accepting Charlie too.
It is not rational nor simple to take anything in a story as just rational and simply explained away. The story isn't about people who don't like their own cooking or people who aren't hungry. Everything in a story is there for a reason. Either the detail is symbolic, moves the story forward or is a red herring. Nothing is incidental. In real life if you go into the office of a minister and there is a vodka bottle in his desk drawer, it could mean nothing at all. In real life it could mean something simply and rationally explained away but in a story it means something important like he is a closeted alcoholic, hypocrite, or he is hiding it for someone else or someone planted it there to implicate him. In real life it could mean absolutely nothing. So the fact Charlie failed to eat anything while others did, is pertinent to the story. It wasn't just that he wasn't hungry, or doesn't like to eat the food he cooks. If those were the reasons he didn't eat the story would include details to point us in that direction.
Sorry to necropost but I just saw the film yesterday. I think you two nailed it. I think it is an allusion to vampires.
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