holes in the plot

I am only about 45 minutes into my first viewing of this movie ... but can't help but wonder why they haven't checked with the moving men to confirm that the bags were there ... or with the ship to confirm that there was a mother and daughter.

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Great points, Georgia. Always wanted to see this picture and finally got the chance with Comcast OnDemand this month. Good film, to a point. The whole brother/sister thing came out of nowhere for me. Am I wrong in assuming these two had a sexual relationship?? I would think she would have known all along it was nutso who took the kid. Though, if these two were bangin each other....she was nuts too. How do we know Bunny isn't HIS kid? Ack!

Really kept my interest up to the point where Keir burned the doll with that wild eyed look. Then I thought, this is going to deteriorate quickly.



End of the world? So what.

That's really simple. Just a bit more attention and logic.

1) She was told to leave Bunny in Daycare. That's usual practice. As you could notice, Bunny was the first kid kidnapped from this school for how many? 50 years? That's not something usual. The yang woman was in a hurry and need to do lot of stuff. In similar situations I've always miss something. That's normal. 10 minutes are not a big time frame to leave your child.

2) He didn't need to put little girl in his trunk on public street. He could sedate her and then put in trunk wherever he wants.

3) ? Don't get what you mean - she's all the time trying to find her daughter but also she does what police asked her.

4) How would you know all this stuff? And firstly not the doll itself but ticket for repairing should be an evidence of her little girl existence. Besides police could find her fingerprints, hair, teeth bites, etc on the doll. And old master could tell them this doll was used by kid, not by old man.

5) Because he pretended to be good, careful brother and uncle. I suppose he has never done something bad or hurt Bunny any way. The whole case last about couple of hours. Ann even couldn't have time to tell police about his illness, although it could hurt his career, etc. Later of course she could tell the truth.

6) Because everything was closed. And if she started to scream he could return to his normal mind and in this case could kill both without hesitation. But while she play with him she could control him and trying figure out how to escape.

The movie is really brilliant. The camera and lighting are incredible. The pace, the narrative - pitch perfect. Deep story about desolation in modern bourgeois society, about relationships, about how important have a proper family, father and mother, care about children, etc.

The only thing I could argue - how fast Ann transformed from desperate mother to cold and smart heroine of detective stories. All this escape from hospital. The final act. And also I don't get brother's motives. How he hide his illness all this years. Or how he show it. How Ann cope both with it and a little baby.

And personally I would prefer an incest theme. But it really was. Kind of. Her brother loves her not only like sister. More like mother-sister-woman. She was really attractive and hot. Remember how landlord almost immediately wants her. Steven has grown in woman surrounding without a father. Their mother was mentally ill. So it's logical children has some kind of disorder too. Steven was a boy when he need to take care about sister. Both still extremely yang - she is only 23, he is perhaps 26-28. Also you should know illness with age could progress without treatment. It could happen it was Steven's first bad stroke (or second) while others weren't. No one knows. But all events quite logical to me.

All in all this is a great movie.

The leaving the child in the room at the daycare center - I could chalk that up to people just being more trusting in the 1960's. BTW, I'm old enough to remember. People really weren't as careful back then. They didn't think they needed to be.

The sitting around the house while brother was in the tub - that didn't seem so strange to me. Even in the middle of a crisis, there are moments when you realize there's only so much you can do. You're going to sit down and take a break some time. However, It did strike me as a bit strange for adults that a sister would hover around in the bathroom while her brother was in the tub.

Some of the other flaws you mention seem like minor mechanical things I can overlook. But the not knowing about Steven's illness, I agree that doesn't hold up to any kind of scrutiny. This dude turned out to be one sick puppy. That couldn't have happened on the spur of the moment with Ann having no previous inkling of it. But then if she had any sense that he's a wacko, then how could she have trusted Steven as much as she apparently did? And why we would she not mention it to the police? Makes no sense!

Regarding leaving her child alone in a new daycare ...

Yes, it's odd that she left her there alone, but I can blame that on a more casual attitude for the times. What truly makes no sense at all is that Bunny was left in the room with an 18-month-old child. There is no daycare in the world that would leave a child of this age alone for even 2 minutes, and I don't believe the situation could have been different at any daycare at any time in history. Why? Any parent will tell you that parenting kids that age means preventing accidental death daily ... they climb, they touch hot things, they play with light sockets, they put everything in their mouths. It just wouldn't have happened.

<< 5. It seemed that Ann knew that Stephen had mental problems. She didn't act surprised at all that was the guilty party. Why would she want her young child to be any where near him? I would have steered clear of him completely. >>

Yes, this revelation at the end is ludicrous, and makes everything that's come before really limp.

The mother's interviewed alone by the police. You'd think she'd say, "You might want to know, my brother is very possessive and has a split personality..."

Not only all of that, but also, was Bunny supposed to have been in the trunk of his car that whole time? If so, how on earth was she still alive?

That was my biggest problem. For somebody who was apparently insane and still seven years old mentally, the brother kept it together pretty well. He had a steady job, took care of all the money matters, and had to have been pretty cunning to have pulled everything off. It just didn't seem like his character at the end would have been capable of all that, especially not for long stretches of time with no indication of his psychological problems.