So this was well rated and I like unconventional storytelling and so I thought I was really going to like this, but … no. The mechanic of telling the story from different perspectives served no purpose. The whole point of telling a story like that is to make the audience think they understand how it happened, and then surprise them by showing them how it differed from another perspective.
But there were no major perspective shifts that made us view the events of the movie very differently. Sure, the details were different. The two male characters made themselves look a lot better in comparison. But the differences were minor, they didn’t fundamentally change the way we viewed the main events.
In fact Le Gris’ version and Marguruite’s version are so similar it just felt redundant. It felt like we had to endure a basically identical 15 minute rape scene twice and I don’t understand what purpose was served by that. If it was significantly different, then you could at least use it as a commentary on how Le Gris viewed her resistance as token (as the dialogue later established), but even in his version of events it was very clearly non-consensual. Literally the only difference I noticed was that she put her shoes on the bottom of the stairs before running up them rather than kicking them off as she ran up the stairs, everything else was pretty much the same.
The story could’ve been told, in 45 less minutes, using a conventional narrative structure and not really changed anything fundamental about the story. It’s like they decided to use an unconventional storytelling method while not actually having any reason or purpose behind doing so.
I understand the justification Le Gris had for legitimately deluding himself into thinking it wasn’t rape - that women were repressed at the time and had to pretend not to like sex and always fight advances lest they be considered promiscuous - but if they wanted to show the unreliable narrator/his own delusional stance on that, then his version of the rape should’ve been a lot softer, where her protests seemed much more half-hearted. Even that had happened, it still wouldn’t have justified the multiple perspective storytelling mechanic, but at least it would’ve shown his perspective and her perspective were different instead of basically just being practically identical.
There’s also something that threw me for a loop - during Le Gris’ version of events, after they had flirted, she came to his room and they had sex. I thought that scene actually happened, and was going to be a key point in the big reveal about how we’ll see their relationship (and the rape) differently after viewing his version of it. But no, I was quite confused when that was never brought up again.
I went back and re-watched it and only then realized that it’s supposed to be his dream. They hadn’t used any sort of dream sequence and gave clear indication this was one, so I thought it actually happened, which made the whole thing even more confusing. Having gone back and rewatched it, just as they begin to kiss he’s shown alone in bed. I thought this was just a cut - meant to indicate that they had sex, she went back to her husband, and he was thinking over the weight of what happened and maybe coming to regret it. But I guess it was actually meant to show that it was just a dream sequence for him. I don’t think I was particularly dumb for thinking it was meant to be literal, which just seems like poor filmmaking to me.
The period piece stuff was cool - not sure if it was accurate but it felt like a lived in world, the a lot of the acting was really good, but… just not a very good use of its central storytelling mechanism. I feel like the scriptwriters (which apparently includes Affleck and Damon) came up with the idea of “hey, let’s write an unconventional storytelling mechanism in there” without actually having the story to justify it.