Let the Right One In

The author and director were actually startled that people assumed the father's friend was a pedophile or even gay. In the novel he is the father's drinking buddy. Both are drunks, and unpleasant ones.

DavidZahir said:

The author and director were actually startled that people assumed the father's friend was a pedophile or even gay. In the novel he is the father's drinking buddy. Both are drunks, and unpleasant ones.

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I was right about the drunk part then. But those looks he gave the boy set me on edge. I'm kind of surprised they were surprised.

Shelley

DavidZahir said:

The author and director were actually startled that people assumed the father's friend was a pedophile or even gay. In the novel he is the father's drinking buddy. Both are drunks, and unpleasant ones.

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Oh ok. I'm reading the book after the SO is done with it.

I don't think it was a mistake to leave that relationship ambiguous in the movie, but with all the relationship weirdness abounding between Oscar and Eli and the older companion...I think it's a pretty logical jump since the viewer is already on edge.

I also think that the homosexual assumption, at least in the Swedish version, comes from the body language of the men. I couldn't give specifics without watching the scene again but to my American-ness, they come across as very intimate and that's not something I associate with "drinking pal."

::sigh:: that says more about the heterosexual American viewer than anything else. (blanket statement there, but everyone I've seen it with has come to the homosexual conclusion and we're all straight Southern Americans).

I actually think the exclusion of the parents as true figures from the American version was a better choice. The mom's head is always cut off when she speaks with Oscar and the father is only a voice over the phone.

amrose said:

::sigh:: that says more about the American viewer than anything else. (blanket statement there, but everyone I've seen it with has come to the homosexual conclusion and we're all Southern Americans).

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I think I only really considered it because of the guilty looks the dad gave his son. There's a lot of acting going on in that scene without much more than glances. I may be remembering more than was there, though, because it stuck with me.

I'm not a straight person and most of my closer friends aren't either, so I'm open to noticing it more than many others, I think. Once he started drinking though, I figured he was just a drunk and picked the bottle over his boy. And the other guy looked at the boy more than his dad so it was definitely creepy for me. I think the ambiguity worked, at any rate. Most people can relate to something in that scene, probably.

I actually think the exclusion of the parents as true figures from the American version was a better choice. The mom's head is always cut off when she speaks with Oscar and the father is only a voice over the phone.

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I think that could have happened in the original and it would have worked fine, definitely. They were absent in his life even when they were there, so that was a good interpretation.

Shelley

In the book, Oscar thinks about the other side to his father, which he calls The Werewolf--the cloying, selfish, judgmental, self-pitying creature who gives Oscar the creeps.

There's actually quite a bit of fanfiction about both films out there. Some are fascinating (one is a crossover where the killer from The Lovely Bones meets Abby--to his ultimately fatal shock). A few are deeply depressing (with Oscar devolving into a serial killer) or touching (such as Abby and Owen finding a way to feed without killing, or to kill only the evil a la Dexter).

Just showed Let Me In to my best friend. She said she didn't know who's side she should be on, but that she sympathized with every character without believing she'd make any of the same choices.

Friend of mine over in the UK wrote a really splendid review of Let Me In.