MovieChat Forums > Two Lovers (2009) Discussion > Sandra - the mystery

Sandra - the mystery

posted 12 years ago by famousmortimer-2
5 replies | jump to latest

As has been mentioned in various threads here, these characters stay with you, live within you. Their pain, their doubt, makes them elemental, endlessly relatable for the thoughtful among us.

When it comes to Sandra, however, I find her character truly unknowable.

She shies away from suitors, preferring the company of her family. She has an earthy beauty yet carries herself in such a way as to hide it from the world. We see her in her bedroom during one phone conversation with Leonard, and it is the bedroom of an innocent, dainty and childlike.

What made her this way? Someone who, by her own admission, fell for Leonard with just one look -- seeing him through the glass as he danced with his mother at the family store. Despite being a learned professional, she strikes me as a little girl at heart, uncomplicated by the vicissitudes of desire, a true romantic waiting for THE CONNECTION.

This purity is both beautiful and terrifying. Maybe it all goes back to her favorite movie being THE SOUND OF MUSIC.

[–] paudie 12 years ago

You definitely feel that Sandra has a "story" of her own.

She is very shy and sweet which seems odd for a woman who is so good looking, and therefore you would expect to be more confident and outgoing.

You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill

[–] gorgsharpy 10 years ago

Well she is dark/darkness for one. But her manipulation is on a much deeper level that GPs. Sandra knows what goes on, don't be mistanken about that.

[–] Hal-83 10 years ago

This movie fascinated me, it's great. The work of a male writer/director, it is the inverse of the romantic comedy where the heroine chooses between a good guy and a bad boy.

But I saw the ending different to most, because Sandra is possibly odder than Leonard. In large part, I think it may be bcause Vinessa Shaw is not much of an actress.

Sandra's modern beauty. She's an educated professional. She's socially adept. She's family oriented. Yet tells us she falls in love with an aimless, unstable man who has zero interest in her and, telling him she pities him, basically organises when his parents are out to come over and have sex with him. She manages to be blank and emasculating and mother in an almost incestuous manner, in what appears to be a pretty, dull shell.

I cannot for the life of me why an apparently sane woman would pursue such a man unless she is hugely controlling and wants a man whose every aspect she can dominate and control. Think May in The Age of Innocence, if Newland Archer was mentally ill, required adult supervision and offered only a little socially and financially.

Sandra was manipulative than Michelle. Whilst Michelle was a mess and she and Leonard would never work, she never struck me as anything other than a real person. I can only see the Sandra union ending with a tragic life.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book - Cicero

[–] aleph-niemeier 9 years ago

How I see it: Sandra has to be developed as a mysterious seemingly background-lacking chracter as she stands for the undamaged non-psychotic side of Leonard, as a symbol for his healing. As Leonard only starts to return to living again, not loomlarging in the past or dark corners within him, she seems to lack background, but stands as a promise for how things can become, how love could actually grow between them as he learns to love again through Sandra's way of unconditionally loving him.
Michelle on the other hand stands for the '*beep* up' in Leonard. He feels naturally drawn to her as he sees a resemblance in how he sees him and saw him the last couple of years. He sees her being broken and wants to give her what his fiance denied him. But it would be dwelling in what is lost and it wouldn't be love.

[–] Jes' Sayin' (6357) 2 years ago

Really? I thought her a very typical good daughter type, except for watching The Sound of Music, a pretty Christian movie for Jews to watch. She is the reliable type that always remembers Mother's Day and calls someone back when they leave her a message. It is unthinkable for her to not call if she's going to have to miss some appointment. She tells him she wants to take care of him, that's her idea of the height of a good relationship between peers, to be motherly. Really a very different type than his artistic, impulsive nature.