would a woman like Vanessa Shaw be considered unattractive. She was meant to look plain in this movie and obviously wore no makeup or something very minimal and she was still really beautiful.
I had to play the DVD again at the scene where she tells Phoenix that lots of boys DON'T want to date her.
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Really? I thought when she said that it was because she thought she wasn't attractive.
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I thought she said that a lot of boys do want to date her.
And later in the movie, her dad says the same thing to Leonard.
yup, she says the guys DO want to date her and not the opposite
shareI don't think so.
I'll watch it again.
I just watched that segment.
She says, "There are a lot of guys,(pause),who just,(pause), They don't want to go out with me".
She's shaking her head in the negative as she says it.
Her response to his interest and kisses was incredulous joy.
However.....I also listened to the commentary track and James Gray says the opposite....that she says guys want to date her.
I guess I' d better take James's word for it.
"a malcontent who knows how to spell"
ok, here's what I hear:
"there are a lot of guys that,(pause), they wanna go out with me"
but then again, English is not my mother tongue
I watched with captioning and it is as you heard it.
If the captions are correct
It's the head shake that convinced me that it was a negative comment. I read lips, but they weren't shown at the crucial moment.
I shall now delete my previous erroneous posts to prevent further confusion.
"a malcontent who knows how to spell"
Actually, even her father insists on the fact she is very popular while they're havin this future father/son in law's conversation.
"If you piss in your pants, you only stay warm for so long".
I don't think Vinessa Shaw was ever meant to look plain or unattractive in the film. Low-key, yes, but still very beautiful. In my view, it wasn't that Leonard didn't find Sandra attractive, it was that she was his parents' choice and she came with all their and her own family's expectations of them pairing up. Michelle was something entirely different - blonde, flightly, unstable, disapproved of - and I think that's why Leonard wanted her so much. But both women were lovely.
shareNot to mention a shiksa—amazing how no one's even addressing the issue of Leonard wanting to escape his Jewish family—as if it's a coincidence that one of Michelle's first comments when entering his apartment is "What are those things?" while pointing at a dredl; Paltrow's character also represents an escape into Christian America (Phoenix's family doesn't just live in NYC they live in an ethnic neighborhood which is shown throughout the movie).
shareNice neighborhood
If your hair is on fire, you need to act like your hair is on fire. - Senator Nina Turner
I've posted before on Sandra's mysterious character, but the longer the film stays with me, the more I realize she is straight out of life. Gray has given us all the details -- they just take a backseat to the heavier stuff more out in the open between Leonard and Michelle.
To recap, despite being a professional woman, Sandra chooses to live at home, keep her room in the same state as when she was a little girl, and remain obedient to her parents' wishes/social obligations. In a way, she's in her own kind of limbo outside adulthood.
When Sandra comes over and gets the vibe that Leonard isn't that into her, she drops the line that there are plenty of guys that want to date her. And yet, as many users have already noted, her delivery is unusually half-hearted e.g. muffled delivery, head-shaking to the contrary.
Gray has the characters' first kiss the result of seriously mixed signals, not passion. Sandra may say she has many suitors, but the line's function is to mitigate what she detects is imminent rejection by Leonard (her defense mechanism). Conversely, Leonard, being as mixed up as he is and feeling trapped in life, reads the line as a tender call to action. That Sandra is so overcome by Leonard's kiss is evidence that she is far more delicate and removed from intimacy than we might have expected for a grown woman.
In conclusion, not a Hollywood representation of reality at all.
Because every American film is a Hollywood film right?
shareWikipedia had this incorrect in their plot summary until I corrected it. I rewound it and used closed captions, and she is definitely saying, basically, "hey: if you don't want me, a lot of other guys do". But it is kind of mumbled and could be interpreted the other way, for sure--the filmmakers probably should have taken more care to make sure this was not misunderstood.
sharePlus her head shake adds to the negative perception of the statement.
"a malcontent who knows how to spell"