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Bartholomew's Replies
Nah, I just like to read these forums before watching a good movie for the second (or third...) time so I can watch out for details I missed on previous viewings.
Most of the Maplewood family scenes were in the evenings, so I guess Chloe was asleep. Trish was carrying her when she and the boys left the house following Bill's arrest, and she was also mentioned two or three times before that, like when Billy was asking about staying home without a babysitter and Bill asked if he'd be willing to change Chloe's diapers.
She was hoping to get raped so she would "know authenticity".
Any attempt by Benny to blame the murder on his parents would fall apart pretty quickly, and I think Benny was smart enough to know that. For one thing, his parents were out of town at their weekend place on the farm when the girl disappeared. There's a good chance that the farmer's family or someone else would have seen them there. And then, the discussion between his parents that the police were viewing wouldn't make much sense. Why would they murder a girl in their apartment and only afterward be concerned about Benny's presence? Lastly, the police will certainly canvas the neighborhood for any available security footage or witnesses who saw her going to the building. The livestock gun actually belonged to the farmer. He noticed it missing soon after and would remember that Benny had also been there that weekend filming the pig slaughter.
I think Benny was planning to turn himself in all along. That's why he had his head shaved. He wanted to make himself look tougher in preparation for prison. He was completely caught off guard by his father's decision to dispose of the girl's body.
I don't think Jane had any reason to lie about being pregnant. She'd already told her father that college was a waste of time and she wanted to enter the family business.
Brooks emptied Smith's apartment because he couldn't be sure that Smith didn't have copies of the photos stashed there somewhere, whether printed out or on a memory card. If Brooks killed Smith, the police would eventually search the missing man's apartment. If Smith killed Brooks, Brooks wouldn't want his family being embarrassed by evidence that Smith might decide to turn over to police. Taking absolutely everything was faster than searching everything.
Then you'll be relieved to know that least one person did. When Mr. Smith was in Earl's car and they were about to set off in search of a victim, Earl told him to buckle up, which he did.
They are definitely not of one mind/consciousness. If they were, the copies wouldn't be so blithely careless about sucking the life out of the originals. Elisabeth, Sue and the old man all spoke of their clones as she/he, and Elisabeth even said "I don't know what she was thinking" when speaking to the customer service guy. They are only one in the sense of being genetic clones, or of depending on each other for survival, but that's about it.
Elisabeth might have needed Sue's income to maintain her own lifestyle if she had been living beyond her means and had little savings for retirement. There wasn't any indication of that in the movie though. What was apparent was that Elisabeth had started living vicariously through Sue. Especially after she had been turned into a total hag, that was all she had left.
There were some obvious references, such as the eyeball shot, but the two movies were very different in plot and themes.
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.
Since the activator is one-use only, why did the company include enough for two uses? Everything else seemed to be measured out quite precisely.
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."
As a courtroom drama, it was very weak. I assume she did cross examine Danny but it was just not shown, just as the other psychiatrist's testimony wasn't shown. But the psychiatrist's testimony could be omitted because we already knew what he would say. The showdown between the prosecutor and Danny would have been much more dramatic, so it's perplexing that it was left out.
It was also baffling that Stan would put Danny on the stand and then not step through the Rockefeller shooting from his perspective. And when Stan cross examined Annabelle, he made no attempt to have her clarify that the fight with Angelo was self-defense and not the unprovoked attack that Angelo claimed it was.
I'll quote from the book:
The tenente knocked.
Tom opened the door in a languid way. 'Buona sera.'
'Buona sera. Tenente Roverini della Polizia Romana.' The tenente's homely, smiling face did not look the least surprised or suspicious. Behind him came another tall, silent young police officer--not another, Tom realized suddenly, but the one who had been with the tenente when Tom had first met Roverini in the apartment in Rome.
That does illustrate how unreliable memory can be. While the scene in the book is different from the series, the inspector did travel to Venice to meet Ripley in person.
To Ace Spade's points, I'll add that Ravini was likely tired after a long train ride, and what may have been many days of long hours working on the case. The odds of Ravini not recognizing Ripley were very small, but Highsmith wrote it that way intentionally. Whatever Ripley's talents were, ultimately it was sheer luck that saved him from prison. The book makes it much clearer because it gives us access to Ripley's inner thoughts: "He considered that he had been lucky beyond reason in escaping detection."
Luis Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel is a classic of this genre
When he leaves Joanne and Api, he is wearing different clothes. But when he is shown driving the truck 20 minutes later and when he detonates the explosives, he is wearing the suit and tie that he has on at the beach. Maybe he changed clothes because he wanted to die looking his best.
I don't think he died, but he definitely did not come out on top and victorious. If anything, he was broken by the realization that his hubris had led to the deaths of several innocent people. He thought he had a perfect memory and was smarter than everyone else when it came to planning a perfect crime, but neither was true. I suspect he didn't even take the money, because he knew then that he wasn't actually smart enough to get away with it.
That was a meticulously-crafted sequence. And there are actually 3 match cuts, starting with him sitting on his bed at home before the airport.
I didn't really think Jaden would have enough motivation to kill her father's mistress. But assuming she did, is she really the kind of accomplished B&E criminal mastermind capable of breaking into Tommy Molto's house undetected and leaving the poker but no other trace of evidence? Not a single footprint, fingerprint or bit of DNA to be found.
Of course, getting in undetected was pretty easy because as it turns out, not only does Tommy Molto have no alarm system, he also leaves his door unlocked! But, Jaden had no way of knowing that ahead of time, so what was her plan? Smash a window, toss in the poker, and run??
No alarm and an unlocked door even though "it's every prosecutor's worst fantasy that someone you convict comes looking for revenge". Why not give the neighbor a key and the alarm code?? I guess leaving the door unlocked was just more convenient for the neighbor. It was also extremely convenient for Jaden and the lazy screenwriters.