sauvin, I respect your track record for getting things right about the film. Your response (earlier, above) shows a nuanced understanding of the growing relationship between Oskar and Eli.sauvin wrote:I disagree that the relationship was fully formed "at lightning speed—after only two encounters in the courtyard".
I would just ask you to consider additional (although not contradictory) aspects of the relationship. (Much of this additional understanding that I offer you is illustrated in the FF “When I Am With You” and in comments following it.)
As I commented there, "Part of why I wrote the story is my need to find a cogent thread that would allow Eli and Oskar's relationship to develop so quickly and so deeply. It went from "We can't be friends" and "Go home!" in the first two meetings to "Do I smell better?" in the third meeting. By the third meeting, Eli was already all in.
"Why is she in the courtyard talking to the boy in the first place if they can't be friends? That she doesn't know why doesn't mean that there isn't a reason. Dear Eli, get ready to be blindsided by something you've never experienced before--love at first sight.
"I assume that Eli and Oskar are developmentally at the same place—12. Oskar's feelings would normally change as he ages and interacts with family, teachers, and peers; but Eli's feelings are stuck at 12. Without Oskar, they could never develop because of the isolation and arrested physical growth imposed by her vampirism. Of course, we can see Oskar as immature for his age because of being an only child, having no friends, and so forth, but not stuck.
"Eli doesn't need to know that she is going through these changes. She doesn't know that she is already crazy in love with Oskar. She just knows she has a playmate (the first time since God knows how long)."
a_contemplative_life wrote elsewhere, “I think you're spot on about Eli's and Oskar's relationship with each other being founded on a kind of powerful yearning for one another that is not truly romantic, but in some ways might be thought to eclipse romantic ideas. They are, in some sense, ‘made for each other.’"
And I responded, “I think ‘made for each other’ is right. After all, how do two people who don't seem to be made for anyone bond so quickly and completely? They are two pieces of a puzzle that just snap into place when they get close to each other. Click! Whoosh! And the story takes off.”
The key here is “the story takes off.” You have described elements of the developing relationship that are what the film is about. That is the story that "takes off" and unfolds throughout. Additionally, though, it needs an understanding that Oskar and Eli don’t know what is happening at each step. That is common in love at first sight—things progress for days, weeks, or longer, and then two people realize that they can’t live without each other. Only then does the whole history of the relationship take on the mystical (and real) rubric of “love at first sight”-- that is, a holistic recognition of feelings that are not understood except in retrospect.
I’m talking about adult love as well as kid love, but how much less self-aware were Oskar and Eli? As you point out, she may well have killed Oskar and never have come to understand why she was attracted to him (rather than prudently avoiding him).
In a comment about the bed scene, I suggested that Oskar and Eli are still not aware of what their feelings mean. That’s part of how relationships play out. The head follows the heart. In psychological terms that you and I are comfortable with, the amygdala, hippocampus, and nearby, structures of the brain (some very ancient indeed) make decisions that the thinking brain is slow to acknowledge (and then often ends up taking credit for!). And as I wrote elsewhere about the bed scene, “The light bulbs on the Christmas tree aren't turning on real quick for either of them, and not at the same rate, either.”
So it is that Eli’s early behavior can be accounted for by something that happened emotionally and that led to a relationship, but that something was already settled as far as her limbic system was concerned. And it was powerful enough to help keep her from killing Oskar and to propel her to clean up for the Rubik’s cube meeting. Håkan got why she was cleaning up; Eli didn’t get it. In the end, perhaps neither kid really got it until the events at the pool scene. Eli, maybe; Oskar, no.
That’s my take on it and why I say it was a done deal from the start. The next hour and a half or so of the magnificent film illustrates how it all played out. And, again, I doff my hat to you for your knowledgeable and perceptive reading of their developing relationship.