Why did Alex act like it was obvious (spoilers)....?

If anything, when Clooney invites her to the wedding...that's when she should/could have told him that she was actually married.

I realize it was supposed to serve as a 'twist' in the plot. But it just didn't work for me. They went out of their way to show us that Alex was basically a female version of Clooney, but then they throw this in and it shows that she's really nothing like him?

@jbowmore. When Ryan first mention he wants her to go with him, the look on her face isn't happy.She gives a oh no, is he getting to close look(now that you know her mindset.Watch the movie again and you will see it).She only agrees to go once he made it seem like it didn't mean anything serious(Alex doesn't want anything serious with him).Since Alex is married and seems like she doesn't want her family to be destroyed by her cheating being exposed.She made sure to do her homework on him.When she googled his name and listening to what he had to say on the boat.She figured he was a no strings attached kind of guy, Mr.Empty backpack.So, I don't think she knew he would come to her house,let alone without telling her in advance.

I liked that part when she calls him and accuses him of being a child as it was a little bit like 'pot calling the kettle black'. She was definitely playing the part of a child as well. I don't think that it's that strange that she played such a double life so well, I think a lot of people do that, slip into a different person for a while and then return to another persona. I think she was very much liking the wild gal lifestyle and did not want anything to interfere with the fantasy, especially to tell Ryan that she was a married mom.

Everyone gets everything he wants.

[deleted]

Well I thought that was sort of the point of that scene: Ryan did not really know Alex that well. He had an idea of who she was, but because of the nature of their relationship and how it started, he was never really in a position to get to know her all that deeply. By showing up at her door, Ryan completely pulled her out of her fantasy world with him. Remember, they were not meeting up and then having fancy dinners together. They were crashing parties, running barefoot through hotels, and breaking into schools to make-out. Suddenly she was hit with the cold, hard truth and she did not like it one bit.

The audience really only sees Alex from Ryan's point-of-view. His perception of people is skewed because he has never formed any meaningful, lasting relationships.

[deleted]

Imo seeing Alex as a sociopath is over the top.

The problem I think most have with understanding her starts with the obvious and general revulsion over the fact that she is a wife and mother playing a double game as a cheater. So our view of her starts with that, and from that point an assessment of who she is, what makee her tick, is at best complicated by things we don't know about her life, and for some at worst those things we don't know become a basis for a more general condemnation of her character.

As others have noted, the film reveals Alex only through what Ryan sees and thinks. The great revelation about her, that she has a husband and children, is then further complicated by being shown to Ryan, and us, in static terms. What I mean here is that we have no idea what Alex has been doing with or thinking about, or changing her thinking about, the life situation the encounter scene shows her to be in. We don't know to what extent the static condition shown is really one in transition. Is she totally settled in her dual life? Is she at all considering a change in it? Does she find Ryan appealing beyond the occasional sex romp?

Add in that the visit was a surprise, with no agreement on her part, and the obvious risk she would have been found out, and her disappointment, even anger, at Ryan for springing it on her is not surprising. The way she understood what was between her and him, he broke the rules. The way this factored into her attitude toward him on the phone is perhaps hard to measure exactly, but it is certainly part of what was going on.

Despite what else we may feel about Alex's cheating and her standing vis a vis her family, I don't think we are right in taking her attitude toward Ryan on the phone as so hard to understand.

As for the way she did not mirror Ryan's growing interest in her, and what some if not most here think she SHOULD have understood when he asked her to his sister's wedding, and how that all went, I think most are missing something. We need not conclude that she was socially inept or clueless to "miss" where he was coming from, and certainly need not, should not, conclude that she in fact did know and didn't care. Instead, I think it is some combination of other factors at work.

First of all, in encouraging Alex to go Ryan did so in a manner that made light of it, that purposely avoided confronting her with an intention on his part to view the trip as part of a new romantic involvement between them. I don't think even Ryan felt any such involvement was more than a potential one, if that, in any event before they went. Again, we see Alex from his perspective, and as others have noted this means we are talking about someone who for all his sexual experience is stunted in terms of experiencing loving relationships. As the weekend progresses, his sisters, for the most part out of Alex's ear and eye shot, challenge his prior way of existence. We see him feel the challenge and that it dawns on him it may have merit. At the very same time he is having a good time in what appears on the surface to be a romantic involvement with Alex, and he starts to like it.

But going back to the ambiguity that surrounded their agreement to go to the wedding (ambiguity at most), what if the circles were turned, and Ryan felt no interest in changing his involvement with Alex, but instead SHE did, and overtly did something to confront him. Would he not have been able to say, hey that is not what we are about? Of course he would feel he was able to say so.

As a result I think what was going on in Alex's head was some combination of thinking she had an understanding with Ryan that had not changed, and that she certainly had not agreed to change, merely because she agreed to go to the wedding, along with what would then amount to a kind of cognitive dissonance in not seeing or avoiding anything in his behavior that would go against that understanding. A possible take away despite all that is that she may well have noticed, after all, as the weekend progressed but wanted to think about it. But, he had not confronted her before they went their separate ways at the end of the weekend. Alex did not have to confront the need to say yes or no in terms of the question of a romantic relationship between them. Her failure to do so hardly makes her sociopathic of something of the sort.

After all, let's say at some point Alex did in fact notice that Ryan was acting in a (new) way that indicated he was becoming romantically interested in her. Given her family situation, would she not have wanted to think about that? Give it some time to figure out what to do next? To say to him? What about her family? Her husband?

In short I think those who broadly condemn her (beyond what I think all here do condemn her for) are overstating her if you will pathology, and they do so by in effect viewing her situation in static terms. There is nothing in the film to suggest that she is entirely comfortable with her dual life, and is resolved to keep it that way for the foreseeable future, that she has no qualms or doubts. There is nothing to show she is literally uncaring rather than miffed, even angry, about Ryan's interest in her (angry because he broke the rules). The film simply does not provide a basis for those types of condemnations of Alex.

I hated the reveal!!!!

Although the movie made it obvious from the start she was not emotionally involved in the relationship. The whole "wedding invitation" should've been a red flag to her that he was starting to want something abit more.