Match Point

Watched Match Point with CDMCC and Elizabeth today. You can watch the trailer here. IMDb users gave it a rating of 8.0. At first I didn’t really know what this movie was about. Yahoo! Movie critics gave it an A- and users gave it a B. I briefly read the description and thought it was a movie about tennis. Don’t get me wrong. There is some tennis in there. You can read more about it in the spoilers. Actually partway through the movie, I finally remember I’ve watched this trailer before. I really liked this movie. There was a lot of story planning and the plot flowed well.

Spoilers: (Show)

The story starts with a boy named Chris from Ireland starting a living in London as a tennis coach. He grew up in a simple town and strived to make his way up the social ladder. Anyway, he’s apparently a really good tennis player, and have played with even the pros. During a break with one of his trainees Tom, apparently from a wealthy family, Chris asks if Tom knew of any music store around, and asked where he could get opera music. Tom was surprised he was into opera and invited him to come see the opera with his family tomorrow. Chris accepted the offer. This basically set off a chain of events which I would soon revealed.

Chris meets Chloe, Tom’s sister for the 1st time at the opera. Chloe seemed to have fell in love with him at first sight, because she kept taking peeks at Chris. Chris said he wanted to see more of London since he’s just got here and Chloe offers to take him around. Chris agreed only on the condition that he pays for the tickets.

Chris starts getting very well with the family and get invited to family gatherings and parties. During one of the family gatherings, he meets Nola, Tom’s fiance, failed actor. Well, not failed, but failing. Immediatly Chris becomes very agressive with Nola. Not physically, but by the way he talks. It was clear he was interested in this sexy female, even after he learns it was Tom’s fiance and he’s sort of developing a relationship with Chloe.

Tom’s mom Eleanor never really liked Nola. She wasn’t doing anything with her life and she gets moody, which she doesn’t think is good for him. On the other hand, she wants Tom to marry his cousin Olivia. Don’t worry, Olivia never comes into the picture. One rainy day, Eleanor was pushing this issue that everyone knew was her Achilles heel, so she got pissed and went off into the garden and started walking in the field. Chris followed her and they ended up making passionate love (which you don’t see, but can only imagine).

However, after that little event, Nola begins to avoid Chris, no matter how hard Chris tries to get closer. Chris somehow ends up giving up after he saw Tom having sex with her ni the basement. He proposes to Chloe and they get married. Oh yeah, awhile ago, Tom stopped working as a tennis coach and began working under Chloe’s father as a businessman. He likes Chris a lot and since he’s now his son in law, he has a safety net, even he does something wrong. He gets promoted really fast as you can imagine. Reasoning was if Chris can make Chloe happy, that’s making him happy.

Later on, you learnt that Tom dumps Nola and Chris gets his hopes up again. He tries to find Nola, but she seemed to have disappeared. Several months later, she returns to London and he meets her at a gallery. He pushes her to give him her phone number and she finally relents. So the next few months, he’s been secretly meeting with her and having an affair and cheating on Chloe (I know that’s implied). On the other hand, Chloe and Chris are madly trying to get Chloe pregnant. Well Chloe really wants to be a mom, but Chris isn’t that mad about it. They’ve seen a dozen fertility doctors and both are healthy and they’ve tried many many ways, but nothing seemed to work.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT THE MOVIE TO BE COMPLETELY RUINED!

Ironically, Nola gets pregnant. They’ve always used protection, besides that one time when it was that time of the month for Nola and they couldn’t find any condoms around. Chris tries to get Nola to abort the baby, but Nola refuses. She begs Chris to leave Chloe. Now Chris has a decision to make. Can he give up his current lifestyle? He can work for a different company, but that’s really different than working under your father-in-law. I did forget about the benefits. He’s one of the top managers in his father-in-law’s businesses, he has his own personal chauffeur provided by the company. His father is paying most of the lease on a 2 bed room loft that is sitting right in front of Thames river.

One thing led to another and Nola begins to push really hard and says if he’s too scared to tell her, she’d go tell Chloe herself.

In the end, Chris decided that his relationship with Nola was lust. He found having sex with Chloe boring, but he had passion for Nola. But that brings up a good question, are lust and love different. I know it’s not totally mutually exclusive, but can you love someone if all the lust is gone? There’s no doubt that Chris doesn’t really have much love nor lust for Chloe, but it was an interesting thing Chris brought up when he was asking a friend for advice.

He decides, the only thing he could do to resolve this mess was to get rid of Nola. He borrows his father in law’s shot gun and schemes up a murder plan. He first kills one of the neighbors and makes the house look like a robbery, taking jewelry and medicine. When Nola got home that night, he kills her. When the police came, their 1st assessment was as Chris planned. They thought a drug addict had gotten in and killed the lady and when he was trying to escape, Nola just home and he shot her too.

You learn almost immediately after Nola’s death, Chloe got pregnant. Not sure what the symbolism was there, but maybe because Chris wasn’t thinking about her when they were trying to conceive, she wasn’t able to get pregnant. However, Chris receives a call from his secretary the next day that Detective something was looking for him. He visits the detective at the station and he questions him about Nola. He lies of course, saying he hasn’t seen her recently. The detective asked if Chris knew Nola kept a diary. Chris then tells them he was indeed having an affair, but doesn’t want to ruin his marriage. He begs the detectives to be discreet during their investigation.

Chris was obviously having guilt problems. He was seeing the ghost of Nola and the neighbor and Nola says justice will be served and the 3 lives he claimed (including his unborn child) will haunt him forever.

The detective wakes up in the middle of the night and he figures out how Chris does it. Earlier that day, you see Chris returning the shotgun, dumping the medicine and jewelry into the river. As he discarded the last jewelry, her wedding ring it appears, it hits the rail and bounces back like the 1st shot in the beginning of the movie as a tennis ball hits the net. Depending on luck, the ball will either go over or drop back. It was quite obvious what was going to happen next too because he wasn’t wearing any gloves.

The next day the detective runs into the police department, but the other detective says the case is already closed. He goes why, Chris has a motive and now he’s figured out how he did it. The other detective replies and says there was another drug addict robber yesterday, however during his capture, he was shot dead. Inside his pocket, they found the neighbor’s ring.

The story ended with Chris and the entire family celebrating the birth of Chloe and his child. The story’s lesson was basically, besides hard work, luck is a major factor in life.

With the story out of the way, there brings up several questions. How much of what Chris said is true? Was he really from a poor family in Ireland. How did he get into a good tennis school then? Did he really like opera? He looked like he was almost falling asleep. Was his goal to get closer to the family?

The next big question is if Nola was really pregnant. First of all, chances were rather small to begin with, but I started to question her when the detective didn’t bring it up. Having an affair gives Chris a motive, but the motive would be much stronger if they knew she was pregnant. She was at least 2-3 months pregnant when she got killed, but the detectives didn’t mention anything about it. Even assuming there wasn’t an autopsy, you’d think she would’ve written something important like this in her diary. It was obvious Chris believed her even after her death because his dreamt Nola saying 3 lives were taken that day. She also has a perfectly good reason to do this. She wants to get back al the family for Tom dumping her and wants to ruin Chloe and make the family unhappy by getting them through Chris, because she knew Chris was still infatuated with her.

That’s the thought I’ll be leaving you to think about. You can feel free to comment about it.