MovieChat Forums > While We're Young (2015) Discussion > Jamie + Cornelia

Jamie + Cornelia

posted 9 years ago by KikiFlorida
2 replies | jump to latest

When they are at the restaurant, doesn't Jamie basically threaten to blackmail Cornelia if she does not talk her dad into contributing to Jamie's film? He said something like their kiss "could be misconstrued" if other people heard about it. You can tell Cornelia realizes what's happening, but then the scene cuts to Josh standing outside the restaurant.

Why wasn't Jamie's threat a deal breaker? In my book, that moves him out of "a*****e" territory and straight into the "evil" category. But this incident doesn't have any consequences. Cornelia still seems to excuse Jamie's behavior and even defends his movie a bit when Josh goes off on him at Leslie's ceremony.

I don't understand why that scene didn't effect things more. I would think that after it, Cornelia would have cut off all ties with Jamie & encouraged Josh & Leslie to do the same.

[–] ExTechOp (2770) 7 years ago

It was a weird way to resolve that scene, but in-film, it did get resolved. Josh revealed that he knew about the kiss, which immediately defused the blackmail aspect. Because it was so immediately defused, I can buy that Cornelia didn't have time to stew on it and develop a seething hatred for Jamie.

Does that make sense? Because Jamie's threat is so immediately nullified, Cornelia doesn't have a chance to react to it fully. It just gets lumped in with all of Jamie's other selfish, self-absorbed behavior.

Added to which, her own father admits to her that he had to be the same way in order to achieve success.

I like to think it ended with Cornelia realizing that Josh wasn't her father or Jamie, and loved him for the moralizing idealist he continued to be.

But it is a strange thing to let slide, whether by Cornelia, the filmmaker or the audience.

[–] [deleted] 7 years ago

I dont think she let it slide , because when stiller was having his big tantrum at the do at the end , she said something like "Yeah I think the guys a total asshole , but the minor fabrications dont effect the documentary"