Unfaithful was a good example of a woman with poor boundaries. She had a wonderful marriage with a loving husband, and she still chose to selfishly cheat because that French guy was so hot.
Yes, each person brings his/her experiences to movies and songs, and if you have lived through infidelity your reaction will be very different than if you can watch this movie without personal baggage.
I thought the infidelity was being used as a metaphor for how George Clooney's character missed what is important in life. He buried himself in work, and did not pay attention to his wife and daughters. He also had to decide whether or not to sell out to development interests. Should he keep ancestral, beautiful land, or give in to greed?
I would have liked to see more of his relationship with his wife before her accident. I think we are supposed to assume that Clooney neglected her, but there is also the suggestion that she wanted excitement and did not have proper boundaries.
I also had trouble with the bratty kids, but I took this to mean that Clooney was not a good father to them.
I agree that the movie does not spell things out for the audience, and it can have several different interpretations.
That is what I liked about the movie, that they did not tell you why there was an affair, just let you make your assumptions. To me Clooney was a decent person, but probably took the marriage and his kids somewhat for granted because no one ever told him he was losing them and his wife to an affair. He went about his life, his work and his family and probably never stopped to smell the roses and enjoy them.
His wife lived life, but she too may have been neglectful to her family & kids (oldest daughter sent off to a specialized boarding school, that may have been for behavioural reasons).
The voice over at the start where Clooney's character talks about living within your means and that his cousins and brothers did not. Knowing they were affluent but he drove a Honda Accord and his father in-law chirping that he didn't buy is wife the proper boat and safety equipment that may have averted the accident, yet another example of how Clooney lived his life.
There are many subtle clues in the movie open for interpretation that really pulled me in.
I do wonder at the often (mis) quoted statistics that a large
percentage of affairs go undetected. That is depressing.
Yeah it is depressing if it is anywhere near accurate.
Thanks for the additional info on the movie. I still wonder why my wife keeps suggesting we see this movie. 4 times now IIRC she has suggested it as we look at what is playing at the local megaplex. She knows this is a hot button for me and that there is a lot of circumstantial evidence I have asked her about regarding an affair. The entire movie would be a non-stop trigger for me.
His wife lived life, but she too may have been neglectful to her family & kids (oldest daughter sent off to a specialized boarding school, that may have been for behavioural reasons).
Well duh. When you cheat in a marriage you are obviously neglecting your family & kids. Gotta be away from the family to spread the legs, or whip it out to have sex with the other person
Unfaithful was a good example of a woman with poor boundaries. She had a wonderful marriage with a loving husband, and she still chose to selfishly cheat because that French guy was so hot.
And she gets angry when he cheats on her. I was extremely pissed off by that part. I wish the ending was more satisfying. She involved two men. One ended up being murderer and one murdered and she goes scot free.
I also liked unfaithful because for once, Hollywood did not portray a betrayed husband as being a selfish jerk who deserved to be cheated on by his suffering unfaithful wife. And also because of a scene in which a woman friend of Diane Lane's girlfriends group, confesses to her and her other friends - who were toying with the idea of cheating on their husbands - how she cheated and the horrific hell it brought to her and her husband's lives. The change in mood between the women from playful to somber after they heard their friend's story, was quite striking.
It was quite refreshing to see a movie where the woman was actually the 'bad guy'.
Yeah it is depressing if it is anywhere near accurate.
Thanks for the additional info on the movie. I still wonder why my wife keeps suggesting we see this movie. 4 times now IIRC she has suggested it as we look at what is playing at the local megaplex. She knows this is a hot button for me and that there is a lot of circumstantial evidence I have asked her about regarding an affair. The entire movie would be a non-stop trigger for me.
Tell her you'll see the movie right after she takes a polygraph test.
Well I am glad for the spoil for this one. I will miss this move and save my self the money.
I hate that cheating is given so much attention in movies and t.v. like the show on the BBCA mistress all about a bunch of friends who run around sleeping with each others spouses and things like that. I hate that this passes for entertainment and even worse it there are people out there that believe that is what it is really like.
Crawl in my head and feel my pain and you will not be entertained you will feel as if you walked through hell.
I am so glad that this movie was ruinned for me because I was going to take my husband and he would have seen it as an attack to make him feel bad. We both would have triggered and then the rest of the week would have been hard as heck to get through. So thanks for saving me the money time and fall out!!
Has anyone seen the movie "Leaving"? A French movie. Painful to watch. Wife dumps her wealthy hubby and family to have an affair with an ex-con carpenter. Her husband does an extreme 180, throws her out. She ends up shooting him to death in his sleep, then runs off to live happily ever after with her beau.
Has anyone seen the movie "Leaving"? A French movie. Painful to watch. Wife dumps her wealthy hubby and family to have an affair with an ex-con carpenter. Her husband does an extreme 180, throws her out. She ends up shooting him to death in his sleep, then runs off to live happily ever after with her beau.
Bullcrap, that whole film was out to justify the affair and make the husband a wimp. Most husbands in real life would've taken a whole different route instead of being a cuck and making funeral arrangements for their remorseless wife, who kept her mouth shut until the day she died.
Yes, thats pretty much the gist of it.
I kept wishing Clooney's character would tell the friends who kept the affair from him that they are pieces of s**t, told the parents of his wife that they need to make the funeral arrangements and payments for their cheating daughter, and even though she found out anyway, was wanting him to tell the OM's wife.
The only part I agreed with was not losing his cool in front of the kids even though the daughter wanted him to be angry about his wife's cheating.
After I found out what the movie was about, and the direction I saw it going, I was pretty much disgusted I was even sitting there through the rest of it. Those that gave it good ratings must have been cheaters.
I kept wishing Clooney's character would tell the friends who kept the affair from him that they are pieces of s**t, told the parents of his wife that they need to make the funeral arrangements and payments for their cheating daughter, and even though she found out anyway, was wanting him to tell the OM's wife.
The only part I agreed with was not losing his cool in front of the kids even though the daughter wanted him to be angry about his wife's cheating.
After I found out what the movie was about, and the direction I saw it going, I was pretty much disgusted I was even sitting there through the rest of it. Those that gave it good ratings must have been cheaters.
We don't know what happened or how the funeral was handled. That is not the point. I posted only as someone who was intrigued and interested in the film and how it would handle the situation. To call Clooney a cuckold I think is stretching it. How he handled the affair I found very thought provoking as he had to handle not just an affair, but his wife's death all at once, all the while she was still in a coma.
Yes we know there is no excuse for an affair, but the questions brought up and the lack of answers I did find thoroughly interesting.
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Re: The Descendants - Take on Infidelity 
