You really shouldn't sell yourself short in saying that you're not good at film analysis! I'm particularly intrigued by this idea that MAYBE Michael is asleep and starts dreaming when he's thrashing while trying to put his pants on.
I think the theory that Michael's sexual relationship with Lisa isn't real holds a lot more water if we could pinpoint exactly when the dream/fantasy starts and when it ends. If it is a dream/fantasy, Lisa still is a real person and I wonder if Michael had any interactions with her in reality or just glanced at her at the bar as you suggest.
However, I do tend to believe that if Michael's relationship with Lisa isn't real, it's a sexual fantasy he's imagining with the sex doll rather than a dream. At the end semen seeps out of the sex doll (grotesque as it is) so that would seem to indicate "interaction" with the doll rather than a dream.
As for Lisa stumbling and falling, well, the sex doll doesn't have legs. If Michael is having a sexual fantasy with the doll, maybe in reality he's dropped it a couple times.
In another thread I was interested to read that somebody asked writer Charlie Kaufman why the same actress (JJL) voices both Lisa and the Japanese sex doll, to which he kind of chuckled and didn't give a straight answer. It makes me think Kaufman might want to keep Lisa's identity ambivalent, and that the film doesn't really offer any proof one way or another.
reply
share