THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS
**********************************************
I missed the significance of Montreal in this movie, which is where she was heading in the end. Her husband mentioned Montreal at some point in the movie, but I did not get what significance it had.
I also do not know what city she lived in.
Can anyone help?
Her going to Montreal was her way of finally doing something for herself after all those years of taking care of everyone else and never thinking of herself. She was doing something on her own, probably for the first time. I believe at one point, one of her sons said something about Montreal being a place she had mentioned she was interested in going but that she had never been willing to take the time away from her familial responsibilities to go. Now that she had opened up to the world around her and found her own voice, she was taking that long awaited trip.
I think they lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
These are just my thoughts but I hope it helps!
ETA: I just rewatched the movie the other day and noticed that the puzzle she received for her birthday was of a world map and the day she decided to start to put it together, she first closes her eyes and blindly points to a spot on the map. Her finger hit Montreal which she says out loud to herself. So I think that is probably also where she got the idea of going to Montreal.
HAHA I know, I'm like the only person even interested in this movie but in case the OP comes back, hope this helps!
Lol, I got grief at home for putting on a film about puzzles. No one was interested in watching but I stuck it out and found it a charming, quirky little film.
Nice catch on that quick reference to Montreal.
You're not the only person interested. This was a quiet, understated little movie that showed a woman slowly gaining her independence from a life of being hardly more than an afterthought to her family, someone to do the cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc. She even had to make her own birthday cake. That scene early in the movie and a later scene where her husband whined about her forgetting to buy his special cheese really got me. Did he ever give her a thought or feel anything for her except as a servant? What a dick. All he thought about were his own needs. When she deliberately "forgot" to buy the cheese the next day at the market, she was showing the beginning of her freeing herself from being his doormat. Good for her, I thought. Even her puzzle partner tried to dominate her in his own way, only wanting her for his own special needs. She even had to get free of him, after their one act of lovemaking, and she did by refusing to go to the international competition with him. All she really wanted for herself was the freedom to be her own person and do what she wanted, which she got at the end in the Montreal scene. That wrapped up the story nicely.
shareI saw it as symbolic too. At the end of the film she has to make a choice: go home to her husband and try to patch things up, go to Brussels with Robert and further their relationship, or go her own way which she did by going to Montreal.
shareHer husband was a nice guy who cared about her, but he took her for granted. God damn him to hell! I've been married more than forty years. A bit of for-granted taking is inevitable on both sides. You work on it. You don't run off and screw somebody else or disappear to a foreign city. I think if she had been more intelligent she could have made her husband realize how she felt and he would have been willing to do what he could to improve their relationship. Instead, she starts leading a clandestine life and he is completely in the dark about what's going on. When she destroys him emotionally by admitting what she's done, she glows with delight over his misery. But it's made clear that, apart from playing with puzzles, she's not very intelligent. She's probably also a bit of a sociopath. Whether or not she ever comes home from Montreal, I hope he divorces her and finds an intelligent, rational woman to spend the rest of his life with. He is a normal, rational person, capable of learning from whatever relationship mistakes he has made. Agnes is not.
share