Anyone else just really not like the Girl?
Honestly, he buys her shoes, she wants high heels, he gets her a new coat, she wants a new dress. She was nothing but a spoiled brat!
shareWhile the girl's character was not fully fleshed out, I did not see her as a spoiled brat. She is naive and trusting. When we first meet her she is working her tail off at the pub. She is so poor that the soles are coming off of her shoes. She meets the kind illusionist through his work, and seems to genuinely believe that he is able to secure the items of clothing through magic. She is unaware of the reality the situation. She does not see him sneak out to work at night to pay for her needs. When given a chance to do for others, she makes and serves the soup to those worse off than herself. A selfish, materialistic girl would have known there were no magicians, yet the illusionist has to inform the girl of this fact of life.
share[deleted]
i get what you're saying too. i actually read up on the film and apparently it was created for a father/daughter relationship more than a couple romance relationship. it definitely made me feel like their relationship was a bit weird but when you think it like a father/daughter relationship, it kind of makes sense to me. in this context, the imdb summary abstract can be misleading haha.
share"it definitely made me feel like their relationship was a bit weird but when you think it like a father/daughter relationship, it kind of makes sense to me. in this context, the imdb summary abstract can be misleading haha."
I've found the last couple of posts here very interesting. I thought it was obvious that it was about a surrogate father/daughter-type relationship, but clearly not everyone's seeing that. (And yeah: that IMDB Summary probably doesn't help!)
It's probably not appropriate to go into the details in this thread because anyone just watching the film wouldn't be aware of it (and it's been covered in other threads), but there is a "history" behind Jacques Tati's script, and it was heavily influenced by his own personal life.
Going purely by what's on screen, the final shot of the photo that Tatischeff has been carrying-around with him is meant to be the big "reveal": we realize it's of his daughter. Like so many real-life Variety performers, Tatischeff has swapped a family life for a life on the road. Alice's sudden appearance provided him with the possibility of regaining that family life, and she became a surrogate daughter.
There is perhaps something-else to consider: the original script for this film is over 50 years old. Maybe it just comes from a more "innocent" time, and modern audiences are inclined to go beyond that father/daughter relationship and see connections that weren't originally intended?
[deleted]
still doesn't make up for the fact that she mooched off him throughout the whole movie. She was a prostitute selling companionship instead of sex.
It doesn't matter if the script is 50 years old, the audience isn't form 50 years ago. The director should have made it more contemporary. Going by your post it seems this movie was meant to have a niche audience, in which case it did that extremely well.
haha I just simply find this comment funny because it's a very logical viewpoint albeit harsh.
sharei found myself being very annoyed by her constant requests and when she just took the white shoes he bought her without waiting the be given them. but by the end i was happy that she found love and saw her previous actions as naive.
"gentlemen make your lives extraordinary"
but by the end i was happy that she found love and saw her previous actions as naive.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what I call character progression. share
I took it to mean that she thought he had magical powers in everything.
In other words, she first thought he could repair the child's doll. Then he "magically" replaced her old shoes. Then she thought he could magically make train tickets appear (which he in fact made it look like)
After all that, she probably thought (like most kids think of their fathers) that he could provide whatever she needed, and it would be absolutely no trouble, no expense.
Just magic. And this is the illusion he WANTED to provide for her, to make her life more exciting than his old, dull & dreary reality.
Her's is quite an innocent outlook, and a major component of the film, with he being the jaded old man who had come to see absolutely NOTHING magical or exciting about life.
- Like most fathers do at some point later in life.
There is even a scene in the middle, where he sees a "job opening" sign on the outside of a theatre, but tells her to go off down the block before grabbing that sign off the building.
- and note that he doesn't just buy her the heels, he leaves them in the room for her to find, in a pretty box with no note. Magic!
In other words, he wants to maintain the illusion as much as she wants to believe it. It gives HIM something to live for. Again, like most fathers with their young kids.
And the point of her eventually wanting heels & a nicer dress is that "his little girl" was growing up. (sped up in time, to fit an 80 minute metaphor.) As time goes by, she starts to see through his ruse, to understand what his life is really like, etc.
If you missed all this, then what film did you see?
the point of her eventually wanting heels & a nicer dress is that "his little girl" was growing up. (sped up in time, to fit an 80 minute metaphor.) As time goes by, she starts to see through his ruse, to understand what his life is really like, etc.
Not to be a nitpicking ninny, but by all accounts they could have at least shown some progression (for the audience's sake) to make it appear as if time had gone by to give the impression that she was "growing up". Maybe a season or two where they spent time together and he eventually ended up working the multiple jobs and attempting to provide her with whatever she wanted.
Within the context of their poignant, albeit short, relationship the only thing most people would gather is that she wanted a lot, gave very little in return and drained that poor 'ole sap dry of both merit and money.
And pardon my American stupidity for not seeing through the pretension to gather the culturally artistic flavors of silent but profound character progression in this beautifully animated yet short-on-story film.
share
hmmph, yeah so now that guy can go broke by her endless requests.. :p
shareHow do you gather that she saw her previous actions as naive?
shareThe missing part of the puzzle is that she doesn't understand that she's 'mooching'. She doesn't understand what things cost (which you see when she tries to buy jewelry with coins) she thinks he can make money with magic (hence "magicians do not exist").
She's just naive - she grew up in the middle of nowhere - and ignorant of the real world. She wasn't selling her companionship, she thought she was traveling with this marvelous magician who would just give her anything she wanted. And he did, never having the heart to tell her otherwise, although he tried once at the fish and chips shop.
I didn't like her either until that moment at the jewelry counter when it all sunk in. She's seeing a different world than you or I are -- She's the traveling companion of a 'real' magician out in the big world.