The ending scene | Do not read before watching the movie aka spoiler!!!

As a 28 year old male virgin, I gotta say that the ending of this film was extremely believable, and was perhaps the realest part in it. Ending actually had me cringing and writhing in my seat with utter embarrassment for how authentic it was. Virgins can be wonderfully intelligent like Seligman but lack that basic sense that just because a woman talks to you doesn't mean she wants to screw you (even if she's a nympho!), which the ending accurately depicts.

Despite how revolted I was at the end, after more thought, it's absolutely brilliant. Why did I want to watch this flick? For the mindfvck I knew it'd be but also the nudity. Poor Seligman never sees any of what we see, mind you, just verbal accounts. He listens to the whole account waiting to be propositioned. When he's not, the end reveals his ulterior motive at last. So typical for someone, particularly a virgin, to destroy a relationship. He too demanded too much from the sunset.

As he walks out of the room, I thought that's how it would end. Joe did many things in her life, but telling her story forced her to truly confront them and accept it all, and forgive herself. In a perfect world, he would have left and the next morning she would start fresh and get her life on track. But... This isn't a perfect world.

I suspected the guy might ask her to take his virginity. It seems like as different as they were, they connected in the sense of not experiencing orgasms. Like they said, the element of love was missing that brought sex to the point of orgasming. I thought they would find that in each other. That's not what happens.

I hate to say it, but, the ending did make sense because here's a grown man, a virgin, in the same room with a girl who is a self proclaimed nympho. I guess he supposed "Now would be my chance to finally experience sex." Though the way he did it was all wrong. It would have been rape if he proceeded. You have to wonder how it would have resulted if they had talked about it, instead of him just approaching her the way he did.

I oddly found the murder, in a weird way, her way of keeping him pure. He died a virgin. I don't want to get into a discussion about religion or anything, because like I said I found it odd. But by stopping him from proceeding, she stopped him from becoming a rapist, or starting a new life where maybe he too became a nympho. He might have been wanting to experience life from her point of view. But it might have put him down a dangerous path that she didn't want for him. COULD have avoided killing him, yeah, but Lars likes to end his movies on a bang, so there you go.

Maybe I missed something. I saw both films together at midnight, and I was so tired by the end. But these are the feelings and thoughts I went to bed with. Not saying any of my theories are right or wrong, I may even watch it again and get a completely different interpretation.

I really wasn't expecting an ending like that at all and initially it seemed very out of place. After a bit of thought though here's my outlook on it.

The whole film is essentially a retelling of Jo's life, and although it is fairly obvious Jo has warped the truth a bit in order to suit the story, this is the first time she has to objectively look at her life and her problems as a whole. Seligman also reiterates this point admitting he is asexual and would be the best person to tell considering he can see her life without involving personal sexual emotions to get an accurate outlook. Seligman eventually sees her and accepts her as a human being. This in turn gives her some closure about her life and gives her hope that maybe she can be understood by somebody. This is why she calls him her first real friend before he leaves her room. Because he accepts her knowing her story.

When he enters again,and tries to have sex with her, everything he has said suddenly becomes hypocritical. The validation of her whole life she has just found and accepted is stripped from her because she realises it is not real and reverts to her original mind frame, only worse because she now feels she has no hope at ever being understood, that's I guess why she reacts so strongly - and of course to prevent herself from getting raped.

I think Seligman did it because he was also an outsider. He seems like he never really had an intimate relationship and here was a girl he liked and accepted. Maybe now was his chance to finally discover if he could be a sexual person after all the years and loneliness. He would have thought she wouldn't have minded as she had had sex with thousands of men regardless of age or body shape, and maybe thought she might of had enjoyed it considering her condition.

Another thing I've been thinking was that maybe Jo had made the whole thing up? Knowing he had liked literature perhaps it was all a stunt to amuse him, and she was in fact getting inspiration for the story by looking at the objects around his room. It would certainly explain the farfetched coincidences in which she wouldn't answer to, and not being a nymphomaniac would justify why she was so afraid of getting raped by a lonely old man...

What is interesting is that we accept that Joe is an unreliable narrator. Was Jerome 1 man or 2 or 3 men concatenated into one man for the story. She seems a bit offended and disappointed that Seligman didn't get an erection when she was telling her sexual stories. we even see her use her talent for telling dirty stories to get the pedophile aroused.

Yet, we take what little Seligman says about himself as gospel truth. maybe he was asexual, maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was a virgin, maybe he wasn't. He sees a stranger beaten and lying in an alley and he doesn't call the police or an ambulance, he takes her to his home. How safe is that?

Maybe this is his thing, finding women who seem to be in trouble or living on the streets so he can have sex with them. We have no way of knowing who he really is. Maybe he's done this before and most women just give it up to him.

And intelligence has nothing to do with a person's risk of being a potential predator. Smart guys go to jail for sexual assault too.

Darling, I am trouble of the most spectacular kind!