DizzyMissLizzie1 wrote:

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Stuart? Didn't you mean Dan?

Oooops. Is it? I didn't have enough resources to open IMDb at the time, and looking at the titles of the chapters it looked like it was Stuart. I'll go change it to save further confusion. (I often don't take lots of notice of character names at the time I am watching the movie, or reading a book, weird, I know.)

Thanks for your comments Thistle, I hadn't taken much notice of Julia's role, falling into that classic mistake of equating Julia the person with Anna the character because I have found several of Julia's recent films to be a bit weaker of late. but you are quite right, I can see that Anna is one of the type of females who requires constant attention, regular feeding of her ego, a steady partner, to feel justified in her life, judging her own worth by the person she is with. of course, that makes you wonder why she would leave Larry, but Larry is fairly self centred and I suspect the intimate side of their relationship would be quite one sided. This would make Anna flattered by Dan's attentions, and his gentler, softer approach to sex.

These characters are so wonderfully real and three-dimensional, aren't they? And the actors have drawn a lot into each of them.

Larry is definitely predatory. The way he looks at Alice at the exhibition - he has only just met her, he has been with Anna for a few years. The way he checks her out is very sleazy. He seems to be sizing her up as a likely conquest and does not back off when he finds out that she is in a relationship too. Perhaps who she is having the relationship with is a big factor. He must always be the winner, he still has trouble with Dan having made a fool of him - even if hte outcome was in his favour.


But at the same time, he is still possessive and keeps an eye on everyone Anna talks to. He wants to eat his cake and keep it too.

He calls himself a caveman, but there's more to it than that. I think he is hooked on the chase - that's why he fantasizes about ex-girlfriends - he knows which buttons to push to get the reaction he wants, but at the same time they are unattainable and he would ahve to work at winning them and having them surrender to him.

When Anna decides to leave him, just after he has returned from his conference - he freely admits that he had a bit-on-the-side and she was supposed to rant and rave, and he would win her back and she would surrender to him again - but he can't handle that she is leaving him. He has to enrage her, get "down and dirty", make her say things she didn't want to say, things she might regret later.

This type of person does tend to need to be on the edge, on the verge of a relationship, once he has them under control he tends to loose interest. Typically he would end up with a harem.

Now, Alice, is she the perfect 'dream girl' or what? She has totally made up her life - every part of it. Each relationship is a new role, her jobs are roles she plays, she has locked herself away and puts on a facade - but each masquerade has rules. Break the rules, and its all over. Perhaps the emotionless stripper was the real Jane/Alice after all. She was destroyed when Dan left her, because she had to be the one to say when it ended, when she was over playing that game, write "the end" on that chapter.