Not going to comment much on the plot. Other people have summed it up.
Some of my random thoughts on this film:
Why is the mother so old? When i watched this as a teen, there was always something fishy i could not put my finger on - it didn't sit right. Well, now i know Julia Roberts was cast at 22 years old and her 'mother' in the movie was a 69 year old actress who looked more like a great-grandmother. It was so weird, and still is. I don't think anybody else has commented on this. This is not a criticism of the acting ability - i was just too conflicted to take the mother/daughter scenario seriously - and it was intricate to the plot! A woman of 40-ish could still have been afflicted with blindness or stroke or any number of ailments that required clinical care, so i was baffled by the granny.
The love interest guy wore brown contact lens, when he has natural blue eyes. This made his eyes have no flecks of color, or resemblance to real eyes in human form - i always thought that was a strange thing.
Also, when he first approached her at night - in the garden picking apples - and creeped up on her stating they could arrive at an "arrangement" she should have whopped him in the head! That come-on lacked finesse, to say the least!
And our savvy heroine flushes her wedding ring down the toilet (presumably because she wants no reminders) and looks away without checking to see if it has actually been flushed away! But what? Why? There is a whole OCEAN next door where it could disappear, poetically, into oblivion. But, nah, yeah, the TOILET in their house is good too!
And lastly, when he takes her to school to play dress-up in drama class wardrobe pieces, just so he can get pervy and watch Julia's character undress, and he dances with her... Notice how he literally jolts her arms/body with every move he makes. He is trying to rip off her limbs and cause spiritual pain. The actor literally cannot dance to save a life, and she would have been sore and in pain after a twirl on the dancefloor with that oaf.
As for the husband, his character is sufficiently crazed and commandeering, however the relationship displayed no truth. What was the connection between the husband and wife? Their interactions were contrived. I was not riveted - it left me cold.
Some of my random thoughts on this film:
Why is the mother so old? When i watched this as a teen, there was always something fishy i could not put my finger on - it didn't sit right. Well, now i know Julia Roberts was cast at 22 years old and her 'mother' in the movie was a 69 year old actress who looked more like a great-grandmother. It was so weird, and still is. I don't think anybody else has commented on this. This is not a criticism of the acting ability - i was just too conflicted to take the mother/daughter scenario seriously - and it was intricate to the plot! A woman of 40-ish could still have been afflicted with blindness or stroke or any number of ailments that required clinical care, so i was baffled by the granny.
The love interest guy wore brown contact lens, when he has natural blue eyes. This made his eyes have no flecks of color, or resemblance to real eyes in human form - i always thought that was a strange thing.
Also, when he first approached her at night - in the garden picking apples - and creeped up on her stating they could arrive at an "arrangement" she should have whopped him in the head! That come-on lacked finesse, to say the least!
And our savvy heroine flushes her wedding ring down the toilet (presumably because she wants no reminders) and looks away without checking to see if it has actually been flushed away! But what? Why? There is a whole OCEAN next door where it could disappear, poetically, into oblivion. But, nah, yeah, the TOILET in their house is good too!
And lastly, when he takes her to school to play dress-up in drama class wardrobe pieces, just so he can get pervy and watch Julia's character undress, and he dances with her... Notice how he literally jolts her arms/body with every move he makes. He is trying to rip off her limbs and cause spiritual pain. The actor literally cannot dance to save a life, and she would have been sore and in pain after a twirl on the dancefloor with that oaf.
As for the husband, his character is sufficiently crazed and commandeering, however the relationship displayed no truth. What was the connection between the husband and wife? Their interactions were contrived. I was not riveted - it left me cold.