What exactly does Elisabeth get out of the deal? She loses every other 7 days of her life being out, and while she's awake she's her old self, still older and without a job. From her point of view, all she gets is less days of living her life. Thoughts?
No. As the customer service rep keeps saying throughout the movie, they are the same person and have the same consciousness (up until they split at the end, and even then they're the exact same person mentally, just doubled).
Elisabeth is just extremely self-loathing and views the different "versions" of herself as representative as the parts of herself she hates/loves. She sees the aging, ugly, pitiful parts of herself in the older body and the attractive, successful, vain, and mean parts of herself in the younger body.
When she's Elisabeth, she hates how selfish and cruel to herself she is as Sue. When she's Sue, she hates how self-destructive and depressing she is as Elisabeth. Really, she just hates herself no matter what body she's in. The scene where Sue beats Elisabeth to death is literally her beating herself up -- shown literally to represent what she constantly does to herself internally.
A lot of people are misreading it. At this point I've gotta blame the writing & directing for making it so unclear. But the clues/facts are there if you pay any amount of attention--it's spelled out constantly throughout the movie and putting any more emphasis on the point would have read as a little gratuitous and infantilizing of the audience--and I picked up on it immediately that they shared a consciousness, with no difficulty whatsoever reconciling what happens in the film with that. In this case, those critics simply didn't understand the movie. It happens. Critics are fallible just like anyone.
Yep. Perhaps this was a deliberate choice by the filmmakers, to lead the audience to forget that they are the same person, just like Sparkle and Sue appeared to.
I mean, what was transferred through the tubes every week? If it was consciousness, then it's hardly a big leap to include memories...
Pretty sure that wasn't what they were trying to point out in the movie. They were pointing out that she remembered his helmet because it was left in her residence, not whoever the guy was. I don't recall them explaining anywhere in the movie that they shared consciousness. The way I took it is they shared each other's heights throughout the week in the form of dream sequences. If they did in some way share the entire week I don't think either of them remembered fully what the other did throughout the week. This seems evident when Elizabeth wakes up and sees the new billboard with Sue on it, and her reaction to that, seemingly as if she was just realizing that Sue had been somewhere and was doing other things without her.
Hm I'm not sure I'm buying that it's the writing. The film explains everything very clearly, almost on the nose, which I'm okay with btw. What I hate is the confusing films we get nowadays.
The customer service rep only says "you are one", which is an extremely vague statement. It could mean, for example, that they depend on each other for life such that if one dies, so does the other. Or, it could just mean that they have the exact same genetic makeup. I don't recall a single scene showing either of them experiencing what the other was doing, or having any memory of what the other had done. To the contrary, Elisabeth tells the rep "I don't know what she was thinking."
They're the same but just her younger self had a higher ego and ambition. Both want fame and to be loved but Lizzy experiences her fame again through Sue while Sue wants to just live like younger Liz but for longer. That's where the selfishness kicks in which is what Liz would've exhibited amongst her rivals if she had any back then.
The consciousness is duplicated once hence the realization of the younger self seeing the older one for the first time. They still have independent thoughts but what one does can affect the other via the nightmares you saw with Sue. I would say it's something akin to twins being able to sense one another or think like each other (certain twins anyway).
Yeah because when it's reversed why is Sue so surprised and shocked at how the old one has been living all week. With all the food everywhere and the TV on and everything
Assuming it goes as planned, Elisabeth gets a clone who works her ass off for 7 days to bring home the bacon, leaving Elisabeth free to spend her 7 days doing whatever she pleases.