At gas station rest room, am I the only one who thought ... (spoiler)
... that Bobby was going to commit suicide (scene at end of film) ?
The thought flashed through my mind. Then I dismissed it, telling myself that this is not the type of film that contains jarring tragic events, as the whole thing is kind of a simmering but subtle tragedy.
But when he removed his jacket, then lingered on his reflection in the mirror, I felt increasingly on edge and thought that he was going to punch that mirror, take a shard of the broken glass, and slit his wrists with it. The reason he removed his jacket seemed to fall into place: better access to his wrist veins without the bulky sleeves in the way.
Rayette, with her threats of suicide sprinkled throughout the movie, seemed to be the broken and fragile one, her self-esteem resting on the shaky ground of Bobby's approval. I thought it was brilliant of the director to subvert our expectations like that. If anyone was going to commit (or attempt) suicide, I expected it to be Rayette, not the devil-may-care Bobby. Daring to think that Bobby's death was where the director was headed, I braced myself for the impact. Until the final scenes -- the one in the park with his father, and the silent interlude in the rest room where I can almost see the workings of his troubled mind -- I had never thought of Bobby as vulnerable before.
But Bobby didn't take his own life, and I had to hand it to the director for arranging a "double subversion," causing me to return to my first opinion: this wasn't the type of movie to portray shocking events. But did anyone get the feeling that Bobby was suicidal, or maybe contemplating it, during that interlude in the rest room?