Dysfunctional Relationships. Painful movie.

     This film was highly confusing. We’ve all heard stories of girls “stuck” in an abusive relationship, where they are treated like garbage but stick around the bad boy. This film is exactly that. The girl is shown as a kind-hearted, soft-spoken individual who randomly stumbles upon this repulsive drunken man in the subway. The man puts the burden of taking care of him on her and for some unknown reason she feels compelled to help him out, this is great since it shows how much of a nurturing and caring person the woman is. Then she ends up going to prison and being blamed for a bunch of stuff and instead of thanking her, the man scolds her and continuously beats her. I was confused with the choice of music which was very light-hearted and easy-going while we watch an abusive man taking advantage of this weak woman, making her do things, anything he wants, forcing her to do activities in which she always loses and always getting hit by her new “boyfriend”. I didn’t know if I should feel sympathy or anger towards the girl because of how passive and casual she is about the relationship being this way, disillusioned by the fact that she thinks she is “healing” this man who can’t show how really hurt he is. Whenever she talks back, he threatens to kill her, the man comes off as an alcoholic, even when she is down (playing squash, ball always hitting her face) he keeps talking down on her. When she tries to do something for his birthday he is enraged at the fact she said he was only a friend and ignores everything else she did for him, hits her again. She is publicly beaten in the metro over some silly game. Salvation seems to come when his parents reject the girl and they have “broken up” she says she is free. But then the next scene shows the man calling her again like nothing happened and the struggling relationship continues. Every time they talk over the phone he hangs up on her, never letting her finish. Obviously we feel the man cannot function without her even if he is so abusive and goes to scream her name in the metro intercom when he thinks she has left him (as if anyone could casually walk in the intercom room and disturb the people’s work without getting kicked out).

      The atmosphere of the film does not match how sad and depressing the plot actually is, the music is out of place completely, I don’t know what the director was thinking. The shift in personality for both characters towards the end makes no sense since it is so sudden and the audience is not shown the progression (2 years gap).

If the girl was the guy and the guy was the girl, would this movie still be considered a comedy?

If real men don’t hit women, is the girl in this film a real masculine figure?

     In my opinion, this film projects stereotypical ways of portraying men and women through reverse portrayal and only serves to maintain the inequality between men and women rather than destroying it. Also, I found this film highly unrealistic in terms of secondary characters and events.

*It is said this film is based on a true story posted on some blog. We all know how credible information on the internet is right?