One commentator below asks: "At what point did Chad fall out of love w/ Claire? I feel like I missed something...though I rewound that part of the movie a few times."
To me that was glaringly obvious. When Claire went to his house after their second get together because he didn't follow his "I'll call you later" with a call later that night, or "even" by the next afternoon. She was worried because he had ended their perfectly warm chat in her living room without sex by saying he had to shoot a commercial the next day, and wanted to be fully rested and focused. Bad move Claire, made much worse by her failing to in any way dissipate the message of heavy neediness, after he explained he hadn't called yet "because Claire, I only got up about an hour ago." Her face and whole being conveyed a desperate longing for him -- after sex once, and two get-togethers. (Try reversing the shoe girrrls, when a guy is that far ahead of you. Kinda sends the message that he/she knows something you hadn't yet figured out about how much he/she is really worth to others, doesn't it?)
Actually, she started to be in trouble when she apologized for her brother being rude to Chad, and then backed down completely when he responded "was he"?, with a "Well
maybe not." The point isn't being more careful. The point is trying less hard to please. Guys of course fall into the same trap all the time, and if anything, quite a bit more often. (Of course that's what a lot of girrlz want -- with their safe, steady, settle down choice in a guy, anyway. But it's no way to sweep someone off her / his feet.)
The other possibility of course was that Chad was playing a serial seduction game from the get go -- of the full mind as well as body capture variety -- with no intention of it ever lasting regardless of how sypatico they turned out to be. I suspect however that he was always open to the possibility -- without coming close to feeling the sort of desperation that it had to be her, that she did. Other romance minded girls are real easy to find when you've got the looks, skillz and the sort of career that Chad has. (Hell, they're pretty easy to find as well when you've just got the magnetism and skillz, without looks, plus something going on career and future wise.)
Of course this is exactly the position which highly attractive girls with some ability to play the game are in -- and a far higher proportion of girls are in something like this position than guys are. (At least that is while both are in their twenties. It starts reversing fast for those still or once again single in their thirties.)
For those who might be inclined to agree with April's (of all people's) several times repeated warnings that "guys like Chad are the worst" (most dangerous), consider this. Is meaningless sex really better while you are looking for the one that will last? Isn't a much fuller connection, though painful to lose for the one who wanted it to continue, a much richer and more expanding experience -- and much more of a trial run at finding the lasting thing?
In the end a lot of the problem is the simple fact that Claire wasn't really in Chad's league (looks, personality or career wise) -- just as Neal, who might have otherwise been a personality natural for Claire, wasn't really in Claire's league. Yeah, Claire could have delayed the falling apart moment by playing the game smarter. But it would have come apart anyway so long as beneath it all she was so needy. She's not going to get a guy who isn't relationship desperate, probably because he isn't getting much sex (guys being different from girls), until she changes that -- though by the end of the movie it seemed an indelible part of her character to me. Frankly, I think marriage to her, though it might well start out full of passion, lovely romance, and beautiful mutual giving, would before long end up a nightmare. In fact the pyrotechnics at the end of the movie telescope that future likelihood.
She just doesn't have enough else going on in her life, or any apparent drive to make other things go on. She wants to live off her committed partner's vital life force. Her sort of full life (and not just bedroom and occasional emotional) submission may be initially seductive, but it tends to turn to poison -- pretty quickly in today's social climate. She seems the type who would always be consuming much energy jealously patrolling her partner's life with bee-bee guns and worse, and very possibly slipping into a bottle or something else as the poison grew stronger. She'd be enough to drive almost any guy to adultery -- while, ironically, monogamous romantic commitment is what she herself wants most.
