*SPOILER WARNING*
This is a rather detailed analysis, so if you haven't seen the movie, you might not want to read further.
And oh my – where to begin! This movie has so many points to ponder, so many layers to unravel. It’s like a season’s worth of CI. Of course, before I began the movie, I put my “Bobby cap” to the side so I could really “see” Guy Dade as an individual.
My initial reaction to him was that I liked him. He was just like any other guy – a little cocky, an ego that needed to be petted now and then, and he was annoyed as hell that a blonde with a camera was following him around. He liked that she was following him, though. If he really wanted her gone, he would have called the cops and had her removed. Part of him may have felt the need to protest her presence, but he didn’t really do the things that would have made her have to leave him alone for real. Not in the beginning, at least.
For the filmmaker, I have mixed feelings. At first, she comes across as a crackpot with a camera. I mean, following him around after he tells her to leave, refusing to tell him her name, walking into his house uninvited and just filming? And going through his wastebasket? And then he comes out of the shower and she puts the camera on him and catches him naked and doesn’t think there is anything wrong with invading his privacy like that? But then, she invaded his privacy from moment one, when she first turned her camera on without him knowing she was filming him. (Could this be a little dig at the paparazzi perhaps???) And oh wow – she follows him to the bathroom to pee?! That was the first moment she truly began to break down his sense of what was really private and what wasn’t.
After that, she sort of comes across as some sort of “artsy” person who is trying to make a vague point about humanity, but this begins to get lost in her manipulation of Guy. And she has a boyfriend who lives in New York – and she lives in L.A. and her reason is “Because I live here.” Convenient. She does what she wants, he does what he wants. They see each other when they see each other, no muss, no fuss, no commitment.
Then there’s Veronica – well for one, she was a little on the cold side. Slapping his face and then grabbing him into that kiss. Kind of an odd way to treat a guy, but that’s just me. I don’t thinks she was in love with him. I don’t even know if she cared about him all that much. She seemed like she enjoyed his attention and she liked that he was so into her, but I didn’t get the sense of a deep connection between them. And really, I don’t think Guy loved Veronica at all. He liked her, for sure. Cared about her enough to try and keep the filmmaker away at first. But he didn’t care enough or else he wouldn’t have asked her let the blonde film them having sex after she turned him down the first time. And that scene in his bedroom – he was talking to the filmmaker, not to Veronica.
But now, the meatier stuff. It was never really clear why the filmmaker chose him. Maybe simply because she watched him for awhile and he tickled her fancy. He intrigued her. And she wanted him. He pegged her good when he said that she got him to do things so she could watch without being involved, and that way there was no risk involved for her. And then he starts to say he’s sorry?? I was like, uh, NO! Don’t be sorry. You’re RIGHT! That was one of my moments of, “Okay, this blonde chick’s a B***h!” She pushed him and pushed him until she broke down each one of his defenses, got past all of his protests. And she did that knowing full well how vulnerable he was.
He said it himself – he never felt safe. I got the sense that he wanted to be protected from all of life’s hits, and that he saw himself as a major screw-up. He didn’t say anything more about his son except that he hadn’t seen him in three years, and maybe that says a lot in itself because he seems like the kind of person who tries too hard and just can’t get it right, so then he stops trying at all. He felt safe with the filmmaker – maybe because she was always there. When she stayed outside Veronica’s house in the cold all night, he was so moved by that. “No one’s ever done anything like that for me.” She made him feel wanted in a way that Veronica didn’t – in a way no one had. In those moments, because she was intent on getting what she wanted from him, she never gave up on him. But the night he walked away – and then he found her in that same place they met and realized she was looking for someone else to focus on – he should have realized then that she didn’t really care about him. Someone else would eventually fascinate her and she’d be onto them.
But what was her point? She was emotionally unstable, too, IMO. And then, when she told him that what she and he had was so different – that she was watching and he was being watched and it was so different from what other people had. That he and Veronica were starting to “steal” the life from each other. It implies that they didn’t really “see” each other anymore. Only the surface of what they perceived one another to be, which then led me to think that the filmmaker was onto something, but she was going about it the wrong way.
She watched him – every aspect of his life – the way we do when we watch him in the movie. We analyze his behavior, his words, his facial expressions, his eyes – everything. We truly see him. We can’t simply look past him, or through him, the way we so often do to people we see every day, even those we love. We are forced, by her lens, to really look at Guy, to examine him, and to connect with him on a level that is so intimate it makes you uncomfortable at times because you realize that you and he are as connected by that lens as he and Veronica’s bodies are when they have sex. I say bodies because there was no heart in their sex at all. They “f***ed” in the most basic, physical sense of the word. That was all they had before the camera that night.
And now – THE SCENE: I had to go back a little bit ago and watch it again to grab onto something so I could explain how I felt it played out, and I also have to say that the most steamy part about the whole thing was Guy’s climax into the lens. And for Pete’s sake – AGAIN – NO FOREPLAY?
(Ref. wedding night in Household Saints) - And I'll grant you that there are times when both parties are "raring to go" and it's not really necessary, but for goodness sake, that whole scene was so rushed and she didn’t seem to be enjoying it at all.
She was making the right sounds, but her reactions rang more false than true. And I knew the moment she let him talk her into doing it that she was going to regret it afterwards and dump him. No surprise there. And I think she knew exactly what he did when he turned her face down. He didn’t just want to take her that way for more pleasure – he wanted to not be able to see her face so he could imagine he was having sex with the filmmaker. And he didn’t want Veronica to see him looking into the camera lens while he was having sex with her. And that’s just what he did. He had sex with Veronica – he made love to the woman behind the camera. And she knew he would do it. She wanted to make love to him – but she messed it up with Mark so she wouldn’t let Guy touch her that way. But she could let him do it through the camera. That’s why she wanted to film him having sex with someone. So she could imagine herself into his arms without the entanglements that would come along with it.
I left this movie with very little sympathy for that manipulative woman with the camera. I had some small bit of heart for her when she cried in the motel room until she choked off the tears so fast and he caught onto the falseness of them. Or at least, that is what he perceived. That she was pushing his buttons to get a reaction. And she didn’t care that he was going to try forcing her to have sex with him. She didn’t scream, or fight. She squealed once, but other than that, no protest. She would have let him do it, she would have liked having sex with him, and then she would have been able to clear herself of guilt by allowing him to bear it. That’s why she chased after him all the way onto the bus and through the streets as he tried to run from her. That’s why she said they weren’t really finished, that they couldn’t stop now. Because she had once again pushed him beyond his point of no return. She pushed him beyond his own boundaries into a place where he let the animal take over. She wanted to make it happen again. She wanted him to force her so that she didn’t have to take responsibility for having sex with him.
He was already vulnerable. He was trying, but he was screwing up all over the place, and she pushed him in all the right places because she knew how to manipulate him into doing whatever she wanted him to. She picked him because he was weak. Mark was weak, too. You could see it. He was like a puppy, begging her to see him again. So I’m back around to thinking she’s a manipulative B***h whose obsession turned the tables on her and left her wanting more because she didn’t get to finish what she’d started with him. She wanted to see how far she could push him – how much could she make him do to satisfy her. He wanted her – he fell in love with her – and he would do anything for her, even to the point of alienating the only people in his life who seemed to care about him at all. In the end, he couldn’t stand himself, or what he’d allowed himself to become. And it seems he turned the tables on her and refused her the connection she had refused him. He took from her the very thing she wanted – to watch him – then turned the tables on her and refused to contact her, all the while letting her know he was out there watching. Which in itself is more unhealthy for him in the end.
And as for Gail – it seemed like they might have slept together before, too, but clearly she was fighting her attraction to him in the end, especially with Camera Girl hanging around. And her husband was a prick. Geez! Nothing likeable about *that* guy!
So I leave this outing with Guy wanting to cuddle him and make him feel safe, and tell him that he doesn’t have to live his life as a screw-up. That all of his trying isn’t for naught and he is a loveable person who is capable of loving others, but that the first person he must learn to love is himself.