Broken English

The modern day woman possesses too many choices, according to the female protagonist's mother. Such possibilities nonexistent before appear a burden to the mother for the reason that they create a disappointing lifestyle exuded by Nora, her daughter.

Nora feels hopeless with men. She wants one so she can know someone loves her yet strikes out routinely and spends more nights drunkenly falling asleep than in a passionate embrace. The general recommendation she has received from her close female confidants is to play the numbers game. And yet all are oblivious to the self-destruction that accompanies aimless dating for the sake of dating.

Strangely, in the age of feminism, having a man in one's life is not intended to be a collaborator in the creation of the family unit. Thus the prospecting of men leads to perpetual disappointment even when married to a success, such as with Nora's best friend. Men never can fulfill the constant desire of want when they are approached like a fashion accessory to a woman's life.

And thus the emptiness of Nora's yearning for love while willfully being seduced by an actor and falling for a random French man who beds her in less than 24 hours, quicker than even the actor who had to wait at least a full day. There is supposed to be some sort of chemistry or romance between Julian the Frenchmen and Nora simply because he is tolerant of her anxious melancholy about the emptiness in her life.

The film proudly is about this emptiness and loneliness that Nora is trying to escape. She even physically runs away from New York City with her best friend with the excuse to find the French man she had a weekend affair with alongside her friend who herself indulges in the escapist fantasy by committing adultery.

The ease in which men penetrate women in this film is indicative of the meaninglessness which is attached to sexuality now. It is improper to say that women are abusing the norms of feminism by recklessly indulging themselves for mediocre reasons; but it is rather ironic that the choice to marry for family, or to use sexuality for pro-creation, is one that is ostensibly excluded to urban women.

In the end Nora is deceived into believing she has found herself in a brief deluded Eat Pray Love dalliance with Paris, when she is merely a pinball that is pushed around by everyone she meets. Her misery, which I believe is a firm critique of feminism, is summed up eloquently when she tells Julian she still does not know what she wants to be when she grows up. She has no identity, no sense of what being a woman actually is. 

In the end, she cannot find love because there is nothing to love about her.

Grade: C