Dull Cecilia

This film did not start out funny, like we were previously warned. I believe this was purposefully created to show the desperation that Cecilia underwent in her life. This desperation made her vulnerable to her made-up lovers. Cecilia has lived a hard life, one without love, friendship, or attention. She chose films to escape her life, to the point of ruining her own life. She cannot do anything right except for go to movies. She cannot even work as a waitress with her sister without obsessing over films. One day, the film becomes real to her and she cannot decide between real life and fake life. She assumes that by choosing Gil Shepherd over Tom Baxter, she is choosing real life over her fake, movie life. However, even her “love” for Gil Shepherd was not real. He liked her because she gave him what he wanted- attention and awe. She fawned over Gil, and that’s what he wanted while being in that small town to save his career. The moment she made Tom Baxter go back into the film was the moment that Gil could finally be through with her. The only choice that Cecilia can make to better her life is to choose between leaving the fantasy world of her films or to fully destroy her life in order to live in her imagination. The films do not help her. She is an extremely weak character that lives internally, instead of fully interacting with the world. She only interacts with the film life, including the film stars such as Gil Shepherd. She can never leave her husband because she is too weak to do so. In the end, I feel like she wouldn’t even leave her husband at all. When she realized Gil wasn’t waiting for her, she went back to the movie theater. She will probably go back to her husband afterward, and get beat again and again. She is a very cyclic character- she leaves the real world for the fantasy world of films, falls in love, leaves her husband, gets heart-broken, and goes back into her fantasy world. She can never leave this cycle because she is not strong enough.

There is a bit of irony in the fact that the film itself was in color, but the film in the film was in black and white. One would think that the film in the movie was dull and not as full of life. However, for Cecilia, this is completely different. The film within the film was full of life for Cecilia, whereas “real life” was dull and flat. She had to escape to the black and white in order to feel anything at all. She feels love in movies, and happiness. In real life, she does not seem as concerned about anything. She does not even seem upset about the fact that her husband hates her or that she has no career or life. She is very resigned about everything in real life. In the movie life, the dullness is rich to her; the fakeness of everything is exciting. She finds fake and dull things exciting.