[ SECRET POST #3241 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3241 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Working late again, sorry!

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 018 secrets from Secret Submission Post #463.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

As a European, I can tell you you are /suppose/ to find her attractive as well as notice the blossoming but awkward due to the age difference tension between them.

She's a lolita character, it's obvious from the sexualized clothes and haircut they make her wear, the things she says and does, if she was meant to be a regular child they would've given her a regular 12 year old girl haircut and clothes like, for example, Hermione from Harry Potter when she was younger.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it might refer to her history with abuse too. I'm not saying she was abused by her parents, but she wasn't protected from it by them either.

It's not uncommon that sexually abused kids learn to use sex as social currency: dressing "slutty", giving sexual caresses etc. Compared to normal, non-sexualized behaviour it is really sad and disturbing, but if you have learned that that's the norm, what choices do you have?

Leon in the film really grows in my opinion for not exploiting her for it.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

Honestly I think it would have been more interesting if he had taken her up on her advances. He's portrayed as very emotionally stunted in ways (not childlike exactly, but it's obvious he's very displaced), and so we feel for him despite him being a hitman. I know there's a bit of lip-service paid to him killing "bad people" but it's flimsy lip-service at that. I wonder if we would have still felt for him if they were lovers, as was originally intended? I have no doubt he would have been framed in much the same way. Where he is emotionally stunted, she is outgoing and provocative. Where she's impulsive, he's methodical, etc.

I don't know, I enjoyed this movie for how far it pushed the envelope, but like OP I think I would have enjoyed seeing it pushed even more. The dynamic played out in The Professional is something of a reverse "Lolita" situation, where the girl is the sexually aggressive one (in some of the deleted scenes, and in the script, she's always the one pursuing Leon, often loudly, publicly, and to the point where it's obvious Leon doesn't know what to make of her), and while I think I would nope out of this dynamic with any other movie or any other characters, but this entire movie was about bad people and badder people, those who kill to survive and those who kill for fun, and nobody in this movie is really above reproach, so a fictional depiction like this wouldn't bother me. As it is, the movie feels like a tease in ways, because they left in the exact same dynamic that would have led to a romantic/sexual relationship, but just sort of "toned it down" at the very end.

I feel really weird saying I wanted more out of this movie in terms of Leon/Mathilda, but I stand by it.