Towards the end of the movie Neil and Brenda meet at an inn where she tearfully informs him that the cleaning lady discovered her diaphragm in her bedroom chest. Neil acts mildly annoyed at first then gives Brenda the third degree for failing to take the thing along with her back to Radcliffe. Her explanations are totally flaky and insufficient; she says to Neil he's always expressed dissatisfaction with her "beauty improvements", etc. Slowly he puts his coat on and leaves the room, where the movie ends with him outside waiting for the bus back to NYC.
My take is that she engaged in this relationship halfheartedly, as a sort of late adolescent rebellion against her class-obsessed mother. But the rebellion was also halfhearted, and she eventually decided to remain the Jewish American Princess she really never stopped being.
But instead of being direct, she "sabotaged" the relationship in a passive aggressive way by "accidentally on purpose" forgetting to take the diaphragm with her. Neil ultimately suspects this, but Brenda never admits it outright. After all, this was 1969 (but the social mentality was more like 1964), and psychological self-analysis and reflection had not become widespread yet.
It was a bittersweet experience for me to watch this movie about a world that, by then in my life, I had one foot in and one foot out of.
My take is that she engaged in this relationship halfheartedly, as a sort of late adolescent rebellion against her class-obsessed mother. But the rebellion was also halfhearted, and she eventually decided to remain the Jewish American Princess she really never stopped being.
But instead of being direct, she "sabotaged" the relationship in a passive aggressive way by "accidentally on purpose" forgetting to take the diaphragm with her. Neil ultimately suspects this, but Brenda never admits it outright. After all, this was 1969 (but the social mentality was more like 1964), and psychological self-analysis and reflection had not become widespread yet.
It was a bittersweet experience for me to watch this movie about a world that, by then in my life, I had one foot in and one foot out of.