I just found out about this movie from a true crime forum, and as someone who has long followed this saga in the news, I wanted to check it out. This movie details the deeply disturbing relationship between 30something teacher Mary Kay Letourneau, and her preteen student, Vili Fulauu. For those who haven't followed the story, once Mary was released from prison and Vili was of age, they married. The last several years of their relationship appeared to be quite tumultuous, with separations and reconciliations creeping slowly towards divorce. However, Mary developed terminal cancer, and Vili returned to care for her until her death this past July.
Anyway, the movie takes a relatively sympathetic view towards Mary, but seems to try to explain her more than excuse her. One cannot watch more than a minute of this portrayal and think this is a healthy woman making sound decisions. Mary comes across as extremely childish, a mental teenager herself; sexually naive, extremely passive and submissive while also desperate for attention and approval. As the movie progresses, she builds a series of flimsy rationales for her decisions, and seems nearly delusional at times. The movie takes us through a number of moments where you want to yell at her to stop, to refuse, to go home, to send him home. But Mary becomes too flattered, too enthralled, too emotionally dependent on Vili to ever actually do it. These scenes reflect real-life moments as described by Mary and Vili, and recorded in case reports.
Vili is more straightforward, a precocious kid who talks a big game with his friends about how he's gonna tap the teacher, who eventually gets in way over his head. Vili was, is, hardly the first teenage boy to be hot for teacher, to be full of bluster, to flirt and charm and push the boundaries. But where Mary should have said no, she said yes. Where she should have discouraged, she encouraged. Vili got in deeper and deeper until he saw himself as in love with Mary. The narrative of him being the "aggressor" in their relationship is meant to fall flat, as if Mary had an iota better judgment than she did, she would have, and should have, kiboshed the whole thing long before it got that far. Vili wasn't an "aggressor", he was a boy playing a game, subtly egged on to take it further and further. For all Mary perceives him as an adult who just hasn't turned 18 yet, there are several moments where we see Vili emotional, vulnerable, impulsive, reminding the viewer that seriously, he's a kid.
So it went, both Mary and Vili perceived themselves as star-crossed lovers, ignoring the inconvenient fact that he was only 13 when the affair started. Mary's catastrophic failures in judgment are compounded by her failure to use any kind of birth control, resulting in two children before poor Vili had turned 15. The second born in prison.
One beef I have with this movie is the portrayal of Steve, Mary's husband. While their unhappy marriage has never been a secret, Steve is portrayed as an abusive brute in this film, seemingly as a way to highlight Mary's vulnerability and loneliness - and, perhaps, justify why she lapped up Vili's flirtations. I may be wrong, but in studying this case, I have never come across anything to suggest Steve was physically abusive to Mary.
I am a few years younger than Vili is today, and near the age Mary was when she began raping Vili. I cannot imagine ever doing the things she did or making the decisions she made. I cannot conceive of the desperation for male attention and approval that would lead to accepting those things from a child. I cannot conceive of being in my 30s and giggling over a teenage boy's eyes or calling him my soulmate. I cannot imagine throwing away my marriage, family, career, and dignity over a young boy's flattering words. Whether malicious or not, Mary was a deeply disturbed individual who swept herself and Vili into a toxic folie à deux that defined both their lives. While this movie is hardly a hard-hitting documentary, it actually does hit several points accurately, and succeeds in leaving you sick to your stomach while, at least on the surface, calling it a "love story."
Anyway, the movie takes a relatively sympathetic view towards Mary, but seems to try to explain her more than excuse her. One cannot watch more than a minute of this portrayal and think this is a healthy woman making sound decisions. Mary comes across as extremely childish, a mental teenager herself; sexually naive, extremely passive and submissive while also desperate for attention and approval. As the movie progresses, she builds a series of flimsy rationales for her decisions, and seems nearly delusional at times. The movie takes us through a number of moments where you want to yell at her to stop, to refuse, to go home, to send him home. But Mary becomes too flattered, too enthralled, too emotionally dependent on Vili to ever actually do it. These scenes reflect real-life moments as described by Mary and Vili, and recorded in case reports.
Vili is more straightforward, a precocious kid who talks a big game with his friends about how he's gonna tap the teacher, who eventually gets in way over his head. Vili was, is, hardly the first teenage boy to be hot for teacher, to be full of bluster, to flirt and charm and push the boundaries. But where Mary should have said no, she said yes. Where she should have discouraged, she encouraged. Vili got in deeper and deeper until he saw himself as in love with Mary. The narrative of him being the "aggressor" in their relationship is meant to fall flat, as if Mary had an iota better judgment than she did, she would have, and should have, kiboshed the whole thing long before it got that far. Vili wasn't an "aggressor", he was a boy playing a game, subtly egged on to take it further and further. For all Mary perceives him as an adult who just hasn't turned 18 yet, there are several moments where we see Vili emotional, vulnerable, impulsive, reminding the viewer that seriously, he's a kid.
So it went, both Mary and Vili perceived themselves as star-crossed lovers, ignoring the inconvenient fact that he was only 13 when the affair started. Mary's catastrophic failures in judgment are compounded by her failure to use any kind of birth control, resulting in two children before poor Vili had turned 15. The second born in prison.
One beef I have with this movie is the portrayal of Steve, Mary's husband. While their unhappy marriage has never been a secret, Steve is portrayed as an abusive brute in this film, seemingly as a way to highlight Mary's vulnerability and loneliness - and, perhaps, justify why she lapped up Vili's flirtations. I may be wrong, but in studying this case, I have never come across anything to suggest Steve was physically abusive to Mary.
I am a few years younger than Vili is today, and near the age Mary was when she began raping Vili. I cannot imagine ever doing the things she did or making the decisions she made. I cannot conceive of the desperation for male attention and approval that would lead to accepting those things from a child. I cannot conceive of being in my 30s and giggling over a teenage boy's eyes or calling him my soulmate. I cannot imagine throwing away my marriage, family, career, and dignity over a young boy's flattering words. Whether malicious or not, Mary was a deeply disturbed individual who swept herself and Vili into a toxic folie à deux that defined both their lives. While this movie is hardly a hard-hitting documentary, it actually does hit several points accurately, and succeeds in leaving you sick to your stomach while, at least on the surface, calling it a "love story."