[quote] Someone upthread mentioned the "twist" confrontation ending between Gracie and Elizabeth at the graduation. Whatever information is supposed to be revealed by Gracie's insisting that she talks to her son every day and Elizabeth's full body shudder and bag adjustment was lost on me. What's implied by that interaction?
That's been variously explained here, but it's clear that the son from the first marriage, Georgie, has become twisted enough as to be every bit as manipulative and as fucked-up as his mother is. (His nastiness to his band members because of their perceived inadequacies echoed Gracie's nastiness to her daughters by Joe because of what she perceived as their weight problems.) When he saw his attempt to blackmail Elizabeth into getting the music supervisor job had failed, he switched sides yet again and went right back to his mother and told her what he had done. She was furious with Elizabeth for talking to Georgie, and told her that Georgie had made up the story about the incest with her brothers so as to undermine Elizabeth's confidence.... and she succeeded. Gracie's character is deeply insecure, but she has a personality disorder so she mimics a fake insecurity to elicit sympathy from others. She cares only about herself, as someone else pointed out above. Elizabeth is on her way to becoming another Gracie, much like in Bergman's "Persona" which is about an actress and the person she's studying merging into one (it's a favorite film of Todd Haynes, and also Darren Aronofsky, who also riffed on it in another Natalie Portman film, "Black Swan").
One of Haynes's points here seems to be security and insecurity can be so easily performed that it can impossible to tell which is which, sometimes even by the person exhibiting them. this is pretty true if you know someone who has a serious personality disorder, incidentally--they can mimic being deeply confident and being deeply insecure as it suits their needs.
It's also why it's so hard to tell whether or not Elizabeth's big delivery of the monologue is good or just a cheap imitation of how Gracie would have said it--Gracie is as much an actress (and always has been) as Elizabeth is, so it's a professionally trained and beautiful (but probably not very good) actress trying to be convincing mimicking an amateur but beautiful older woman who had herself been acting a part in order to hoodwink Joe into loving her.
Was Gracie actually sexually abused as a child by her older brothers? Probably. But I think Haynes and the screenwriters always drop plenty of clues that Gracie in turn sexually abused her younger brothers too, just as she sexually abused Joe and continus to manipulate him (and probably continues to sexually abuse Georgie and manipulates him).
[quote]I noticed the lisp came and went and wondered if Julianne was unable to keep it up or if Gracie used it to manipulate those around her by acting more innocent than she really was. It was most obvious in emotionally-charged scenes.
That was one of my favorite things in the movie. I read in an interview that the come-and-go lisp was Julianne Moore's idea. It's sort of like the breathy baby voices both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy would affect when they knew cameras were on them, but which they dropped when the mics were no longer hot.
