The white oleander is a beautiful but highly poisonous plant, just like the artist's mother of the film's protagonist, Astrid—beautiful yet extremely dangerous.
As a child, Astrid has good reason to hate her artist mother. She is extremely selfish and stubbornly insists that only her own beliefs are right and everything else is wrong; she has a strong desire to control and does everything she can to prevent her daughter from accepting things that are different from her own obsession; The soon-to-be daughter was left at home for several months. She prevented Astrid's biological father from visiting his daughter, leaving her with a lack of fatherly love from an early age.
Each of us was told what was right and what was wrong as a child. And it's usually our parents who play that role. Their preferences shape our perceptions. Although children are not replicas of their parents, it is undeniable that their parents will have a great influence on them, especially when the children's minds are not yet complete.
Astrid has been dependent on his mother since he was a child, so he has a lot of dependence on his mother, and he will accept the ideas instilled in her as a matter of course. Therefore, after her mother did so many unreasonable things, she never tried to stop it, which largely explained why she had a premonition that her mother would kill the man, but did nothing.
Three different foster families allowed Astrid to learn about the world outside of his mother, and he developed an emotional bond with several people other than his mother. This made her think, and she began to question whether her mother's teaching was correct in all aspects. After all that, she came to the conclusion that her mother's teachings were wrong, at least they were not for her. She almost decided that her misfortune was almost entirely due to this woman. But the mother's final decision reconnected the almost severed connection between mother and daughter.
Had it not been for her mother's final decision, Astrid would have decided that her mother was an extremely selfish woman who had dragged herself into hell, left her stranded, lost her father's love, and was terrified. But that decision shook Astrid's conclusion. Her mother loved her after all, even though it left her scarred.
I have been thinking, parents love their children instinctively, and hurting them is also instinctive, right? Because sometimes, it's hard to distinguish the boundaries between love and hurt. People often do harm in the name of love, resulting in the entanglement of love and hate. Astrid got caught up in this struggle and somehow came to a settlement. And unfortunately, in more of the endings, the relationship is broken - just as Astrid intended to do before the final decision.
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