Member-only story
Devoted or Deluded? The one ‘romance’ film all women must see
Loyalty to the wrong man isn’t a good thing
The sea splits over the pier and foams grey in the sunlit gloom as a young woman wraps her arms around her body and stares out at the gulls. She’s in love, and she’s pregnant. Her head is thick with the seams of daydreams about the man who has consumed her mind and body. The memory of him lingers on her lips and spans her waist. But he doesn’t love her. He’s never loved her. He hates her.
And she doesn’t know.
He loathes her. He hates the sight of her face, the shape of her body, the clothes she wears, the way she paws at him, he hates the way she tries to hold him at night, he hates the sound of her voice, he hates the childish naivety in her eyes. He despises everything she is and everything she has ever been and ever will be. There’s a horrifying scene where he records himself on an old record revealing the truth of his cold, cartilaginous, brutal hatred for his bride. He spits the words. I hate you. I hate you, Rose.
But she has convinced herself that despite the overwhelming evidence that he is using her, that he doesn’t care about her, that he is a monster, that he does. Because the words are what she wants to hears: I love you Rose, he says, after a fit of terrifying violence. I need…
