There are three main women in the film: Sarah, a traditional family woman, Kathy, a strong woman, and May, a strong and loving old mother.
As the most important role among the three, Sarah shows more of the confusion and helplessness of women in the traditional sense after becoming a mother. She is not gregarious, lives an ordinary life, has a family, and encounters the embarrassment of love or passion receding. In her own family, we can't find any moments of warmth between their husband and wife, only strangeness is shown, just like two people living together like that, in the name of husband and wife, raising a unified child, But there is no communication between the two. Sarah longed for a free life, and raising children was a burden for her - she felt like she had no room for herself. She loves running in the evening, and even conflicts with her husband because she can't have this time and space of her own. The concept of home was vague in her mind, probably just a place to sleep. And this sleeping place is also full of traces of her husband's previous marriage--I wonder if this means that her current marriage has no love at all, just a combination like a routine, for some helpless reasons. Before Brad appeared, she was very lonely, she could only have some innocuous family life with the surrounding mothers of the same age, and she could only convey some love that she might not understand in the caressing with the innocent little daughter. She walked away from the chatting women in her appearance, reminding herself to observe like an anthropologist, as a typical suburban woman researcher. But this observation invisibly isolates herself from the typical women, who, as the film's narrator says, is not a typical suburban woman, although she lives in the suburbs (to help the viewer's understanding, the film in the narration and in the dialogue A lot of words and phrases have been added to help understanding, it should be for commercial considerations). Sarah is not reconciled to a mediocre life, but she can't find a high-level life or a channel for spiritual communication. She can only pretend to live like an ordinary person, plain and boring, like most people.
Brad's appearance is a ray of light in Sarah's life, and along it she sees the shadow of heaven - love. The film spends a lot of film on two families, especially Sarah and Brad, focusing on their common helplessness and loneliness. This time, I felt that what this film wanted to express was just the common "seven-year itch", a tearful extramarital affair, which is within reach but out of reach. But the appearance of the book club has changed my opinion. In the discussion of "Madame Bovary", it is obvious that Sarah's inner cry and struggle in the face of her own situation. This plot about extramarital affairs doesn't just simply change the protagonist to a woman instead of a traditional man or both men and women, it also changes the theme. In this extramarital affair story, the focus is not on love, but only on the struggle experience of the heroine, a woman in a certain period. In front of Sarah, Brad always presents the image of a good man, and has no complaints about his family status - in fact, it doesn't seem to be, his ambition seems to have long been hidden in the spiritual space with the passage of time. the lowest level. In the face of the subtle love between him and Sarah, which was exactly the result of spiritual communication, he dared not face it and keep running away, fearing that it would affect his unsatisfactory but still peaceful life. Sarah didn't run away from the beginning, she always wanted to pursue some kind of ecstatic mind-body connection. After making the final effort to determine the death of the long-desperate marriage, she started the pursuit of this chance love without hesitation. Does this mean that women are more eager for spiritual pursuits and men are more lazy?
Like Madame Bovary (the plot discussed in the film, the author did not read the original book), she met an exact love outside of marriage, and this man was even more exciting than Madame Bovary, who said that "Let's run away" is the words that all women can't resist. While waiting at the stadium, he met the "perverted" Ronnie. Ronnie, who was so disrespectful, said "Mom Died" heartbroken. This sentence awakened the hidden motherhood in Sarah, and the moment she started frantically searching for her daughter, I knew she was going to come home, as shown later. In the face of great motherhood, her love finally gave in. In order for her child to grow up like a normal person without special pressure, she chose to give up love and choose to return to the boring life. That kind of reluctance is like choosing love in the first place. Same. How life will be in the future is left to the audience. She shows her strength throughout the film, realizing her motherhood, and she must be stronger.
Kathy is a side character in the film, confident, beautiful, successful in her career, and doesn't seem to be bothered by anything. For her husband, she has always been very at ease, believing that her charm and ability are enough to make the somewhat cowardly husband fit. Even in the eyes of the child, she is definitely better than her father - this is shown through Brad's helpless eyes, narration, and the clown hat positioned by the camera. In the family, she is an authority, with the children, and with Brad. At this time, her heart was actually more about her career. The child, she gave it to her husband with confidence. It can be said that in this state, she will never be able to detect Brad's abnormality. But an interview changed that. The footage of the interview was fixed on the little boy's melancholy face. In this shot, the changes in the actors' facial expressions are very appropriate (I just found myself admiring the acting in this subtle change). He lost his father to the Iraq war, and the deep-rooted grief silenced him—if he was crying, Kathy probably wouldn't have let the picture freeze there. Kathy stared into his sad eyes, silent face. It was in this gaze that she became aware of the child for the first time—a little boy that undoubtedly reminded her of her own son, as well as her own motherhood. It is because of this awakening of consciousness that she began to pay attention to her family and her husband's abnormality. She was very professional, but in that hurried, fretful phone call following the climate, the mother's consciousness prevailed.
In this family, Brad's weakness undoubtedly contrasts with Kathy's strength. In this family, he makes the protagonist of the camera performance, the actual supporting role. Brad meets Sarah, meets the football team, and seeks the confidence and self-esteem of the man at the bottom of his heart. This is an inspiring story, and it could be a film about men finding themselves under the flood of feminism. But this story, I prefer to see it as a side expression of Kathy's loneliness. He hides from his wife that he is not preparing to take the lawyer's license, he pursues love behind his back, and he even wants to run away with the other protagonist of this love and put it into action... The film does not show Kathy's melancholy, and she always smiles in front of the camera. But think about the meaning of Sarah - women's feelings come first, what is Sarah's state when she doesn't care about her career? During the dinner between the two families - Kathy's temptation, Sarah and Brad's difficulties - her sensitivity clearly showed the strong woman's inner delicacy and unease, as well as her determination not to give up.
The last woman who should not be let go is "perverted" Ronnie's mother May. A great mother is like a collection of all mother's advantages: kindness, strength, bravery - in front of this image, I have to admire Americans' concern for humanity and sensational ability. In order to protect her mentally handicapped son from being disturbed and harmed by Larry, who is also mentally handicapped, this skinny old lady is as angry as a lion in the face of provocation, without any thought that she is facing a young man a head taller than herself. Strong man. A heart attack suddenly occurred in this protection, she died, and only her defective son was worried. When he was dying, he wrote the last words "Please be a good child" in pencil. In fact, why doesn't she know that her child is not as good as she said to him? She has always known this poor poor child, and has never given up. This kind of mother's love is as broad and deep, even this mentally handicapped child can't bear it, let alone us normal viewers?
But the if and such delicate description of this plot has a strong commercial flavor. The greatness of motherhood has already been shown in Sarah and Kathy, and it shows more, not only motherhood, but also women's psychology and human nature. The insertion of this story first made the theme of the film more obvious, even too obvious. So I appreciate the story and the way it's presented but I don't appreciate it being put in this movie. Plus, the story's "perverts" — pedophile Ronnie and psychotic hysterical Larry — both add to the film's audience-friendly gimmicks. Without these two people, the movie would definitely lack a lot of power to attract the public, and the addition of these two people has nothing to do with the theme. The role of May's appearance is really the rescue of the whole movie when these two people attract the audience. It can be said to be a gorgeous patch for this movie. Fortunately, this patch has inadvertently enriched the film, both in terms of content and expression - three stories and three clues are intertwined in such a natural and subtle way that we often overlook this. Cross, and see all three stories as a seamless whole. This kind of treatment is very interesting. It makes people not feel that the use of the camera is inflexible and takes care of the understanding ability of some audiences. It does not dazzle them to the point where they are confused. It allows the director to show a gorgeous performance between business and art. .
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