39 replies to this topic

[wendy54]

Yes, I believe that could be true.

Learning that Le Chiffre had failed, Mr. White came to do two things: kill Le Chiffre, and get the money back. He promised Vesper he would let the tortured Bond live if she would give him the money.

I'll need to see the movie again, though.

This makes sense, but where does the kidnapped boyfriend that M mentions at the end play into this? Did she betray Bond to save the boyfriend and then fall for Bond later? Also, as I mentioned in an earlier post, wouldn't they have had to keep James alive anyway, since nobody else had the password? Thanks for your insight!

[wendy54]

Ok I think I have a thoery that may explain a few things. Let me know what you think:

Vesper was working for Mr. White from the beginning. She was forced to do this when the organization kidnapped her boyfriend. This explains her "love-knot" necklace. This also explains why she didn't want to front Bond the extra money in the poker game. With Vesper working for White and closely with Bond, White's organization gets the money no matter what the outcome (ie if Le Chiffre wins, they get the money. If Bond wins, Vesper can betray him and get the money) I don't believe that Le Chiffre knew about Vesper's affiliation with The Organization. (However, Mathis' affiliation still remains unclear to me). When White comes to kill Le Chiffre for losing the money, Vesper makes a deal to "save Bond"--my guess is that she tells White not to bother with further torture and that she will get the password and get the money...though we don't know how deep her feelings are for Bond at this point or what her true motivations were...fear of Mr. White? her boyfriend? saving Bond? (and she knows it's likely that Bond would allow himself to be tortured to death before revealing the password anyhow, so in a way she does save his life) At some later point during his recovery and their vacation, she really falls for Bond (and removes her necklace) and this is why she is so tortured at the end and kills herself.

Just a theory...but I think this explains a lot of things in the plot that didn't make much sense to me...hopefully the next film will clear things up a bit.

[Dr. Noah]

A few more thoughts to add to the confusions:

1. Why does Le Chiffre tie Vesper in the road knowing full well she could be run over and killed? Why cause Bond to crash, knowing he could be killed and therefore the secret of the money irretrieveable (the novel suffers from the same problem here)?

I'd say because his first priority is to stop Bond, who is going to kill him. How else are they going to stop a professional assassin chasing them? Hope to wing him in a gunfight? I think it's a fairly good plan if you're avoiding a direct confrontation. And much better than the novel.

And who says running over Vesper would kill Bond?

2. I CAN accept that Vesper is not really being tortured (she shows know physical or psycholical damage later) but merely making appropriate sounds to effect Bond. That being the case, why risk her potential death as described above?

Maybe they already have the code from her.

But who says she wasn't hurt? We don't know how long the recuperation for both went on. Or maybe she was screaming in fright because she heard what was happening to Bond.

3. But of course, as has been pointed out, why didn't she just wait for Bond to enter his password and have the money trasnfered? The ONLY answer I can come up with here is that Le Chiffre didn't have the time to wait until Bond got round to transfering the cash.

4. Finally, we know Vesper transfered the money to a "holding" account rather than directly to Mr White (M confirms the Treasury have not received it, she goes to collect it from the bank). But WHY do this, why not simply transfer the money straight to Mr White electronically, therefore fulfilling his demands and enabling her Algerian boyfried to be released. She can leave Bond and head back to her boyfriend.

Probably so they couldn't trace Mr. White. I sure wouldn't use my account!

Anyway, interesting questions. But I think the whole point of Vesper is that she is a mystery and Bond CAN'T figure her out. Bond even says so during the meal after the card game. It could be any of the reasons listed above, and Bond will never know which is true.

[Dr. Noah]

Ok I think I have a thoery that may explain a few things. Let me know what you think:

Vesper was working for Mr. White from the beginning. She was forced to do this when the organization kidnapped her boyfriend. This explains her "love-knot" necklace. This also explains why she didn't want to front Bond the extra money in the poker game. With Vesper working for White and closely with Bond, White's organization gets the money no matter what the outcome (ie if Le Chiffre wins, they get the money. If Bond wins, Vesper can betray him and get the money) I don't believe that Le Chiffre knew about Vesper's affiliation with The Organization. (However, Mathis' affiliation still remains unclear to me). When White comes to kill Le Chiffre for losing the money, Vesper makes a deal to "save Bond"--my guess is that she tells White not to bother with further torture and that she will get the password and get the money...though we don't know how deep her feelings are for Bond at this point or what her true motivations were...fear of Mr. White? her boyfriend? saving Bond? (and she knows it's likely that Bond would allow himself to be tortured to death before revealing the password anyhow, so in a way she does save his life) At some later point during his recovery and their vacation, she really falls for Bond (and removes her necklace) and this is why she is so tortured at the end and kills herself.

Just a theory...but I think this explains a lot of things in the plot that didn't make much sense to me...hopefully the next film will clear things up a bit.

Yup. I would add there's a great shot of Vesper near the end of the game, watching Bond play, that conveys her hopeless situation. He's signing death warrants for both of them, and there's nothing she can do, since the CIA is fronting Bond.

[Mr. Wint]

As Eva Green explained in one interview, Vesper is a very complicated character. At first she was set on saving her Algerian boyfriend who was captured by Mr. White's secret organization. On her mind, it was only her boyfriend and her, Bond wasn't supposed to be in the equation. But after getting to know Bond better, she can't help but fall in love with Bond. Then she makes deal with the secret organization again to try to save Bond. Why she didn't wire the money directly to the organization? She is holding the money as a bargaining chip. She is a very smart girl indeed! When she realized Bond is in love with her at the hospital (the secret code), Bond's expression is happy, her expresssion is more of a worry, it was like "what am I supposed to do now?" (That scene is actually a turning point of her character. It reveals for the first time Vesper may not be as simple as we think she is.) But the twinkle in her eye tells you she has a plan inside her head....Now that she has the money transferred to a secret account, her account, she can continue to do what she has set out to do....back at the bargaining table with Mr. White and save her boyfriend. The fact that she no longer wears the necklace meaning she has made a decision to go off with Bond. Seems logical. Vesper is not a bad girl, but like a real person, she tries to do the best in the worst situation. All her motives are based on love, not money. How else can Ian Fleming end her character? How she ends her life? Poisoning, or drowning....that's really doesn't matter. I trully enjoy the depth of the character Vesper. It's rare in movies these days to see character that well thought out.

[Joyce Carrington]

wendy54, Mr. Wint, you are right. Thanks for clearing this up - this seems to make a lot more sense!

[wendy54]

If anyone is interested, I found this explanation on another website (wikipedia). It might be similar to what some of you have already said, but I thought I'd go ahead and share it anyway :

"Bond, feeling betrayed, learns from M that Vesper had an Algerian boyfriend who was kidnapped by the organization for whom she negotiated the handover of money in order to save his life. But Vesper had fallen in love with Bond and had agreed to pay Mr. White's organisation in order to save Bond's life when Le Chiffre had captured them. Vesper had also left a clue in a mobile phone text message with Mr. White's number. Mr. White is next seen arriving at a palatial estate and answering his mobile to a caller saying "Mr. White? We need to talk." White asks, "Who is this?" He is then shot in the foot, falls, crawling desperately towards the villa. Standing over him with a UMP, Bond reveals himself as the shooter and responds to Mr. White's question with the iconic line "The name's Bond. James Bond." We hear the full James Bond theme for the first time and the closing credits roll."

This kind of makes it sound like Vesper had promised two different people the same money and that she was not directly working for Mr. White (as I said earlier), but rather Mr. White's boss or someone else in the organization. (so it seems Le Chiffre was working under Mr. White and that Mr. White was working for some unknown boss, who employed Vesper) This explanation is also consistent with her not giving Bond the money...with Bond out of the picture and Le Chiffre winning, it looked like the organization was going to get its money back and Vesper's services would no longer be needed...the govt would theoretically be none the wiser, her boyfriend lives, end of story. Someone mentioned earlier about a look on Vesper's face at the end of the poker game that shows she is upset/worried that Bond won because she knows this means trouble for them and further deceit on her part....I need to see the movie again, but this would also be consistent with that...

Just another possibility to add to the speculation....

[Doubl07]

There have never been so many unanswered questions in a Bond film, which I think is a good thing as long as they resolve it in the next film. Is Vesper deceiving Bond from the beginning or is it when they are both captured that she betrays him and a deal is made to spare Bond's life as long as Vesper delivers the money later after she gets the password. This would mean that they would no longer need Le Chiffre since his torture does not seem to be working anyway and Vesper is going to get the password from Bond, so they kill Le Chiffre. So basically, Vesper has to betray him in order for him to live. Like I said, at what point she betrays Bond I still don't know.

[Nicolas Suszczyk]

Correct.. in the novel, she leaves a note for Bond saying she's a double agent and can't handle the guilt and shoots herself.

No, she doesn't shoots herself, she takes a pill.

[SFKLR]

I've seen the movie twice now, never read the book. The Vesper backstory is vague in the film, but my take was like Wendy54's. My girlfriend had a different take, but this was mine:

1) Vesper was compromised by Mr. White's organization even before we meet her.

M's explanation to Bond about Vesper's kidnapped Algerian b/f included "We should have caught that" as if it was something in the past that could have been caught in the either the Treasury application process or in the review of her file to accompany MI6 on this assignment. We just don't know how long she was compromised or whether she had accomplished other tasks as a mole for Mr. White's organization in the recent past. It is possible and likely that she had a Mr. White-given task at Montenegro to withhold Bond's second buy-in (making it more likely LeChiffre won). She's an accountant, not a spy, and eliminating Bond's second chance is a powerful advantage--perhaps the most she had to offer them, and the one that could set her b/f free. Her crying in the shower is true shock of a non-spy over the murderous world she finds herself in.

White's organization wanted to help LeChiffre win the money back by handicapping Bond. They would have killed LeChiffre after the card game anyway (win or lose) as an embarrasment to their own credibility with their clients.

2) Still unclear whether Mathis was a baddie.

It could have been Vesper OR Mathis who relayed LeChiffe's "tell" to LeChiffre. M thinks the Vesper-as-baddie fact clears Mathis. Bond is correct when he says not necessarily. I expect we will see Mathis again in the next film as a guy who we can't quite tell is good or bad.

3) In the torture chamber, VEsper makes a deal with White to save Bond's life.

White eliminates the embarrasment of LeChiffre. ("It's not about the money so much as knowing who to trust.") White had accepted the fact that the money was lost for good. White saw that there was no way he (or LeChiffre, or anyone else) could get the password out of Bond by torture. HOWEVER, Mr. White won't turn down $120MM euro when Vesper tells him she can deliver it to him in exchange for Bond's life!

M was consoling Bond when she said it, but she was right: BOnd was spared by White because Vesper made the deal to save him. I don't think White cared one way or another about Bond. He was there for LeChiffre. Vesper had to know that her Algerian b/f was probably dead by now since LeChiffre lost the card game, and White was now about to kill her too. "I can get the password from him," she probably said. By now she had personal feelings for Bond and, from her experience, Vesper saw that White's organization could kill anyone, anywhere, at any time.

4) Vesper can't bear the guilt of betraying Bond's love.

She took off the necklace. Her mourning for her probably-dead Algerian boyfriend was surpassed by her love for Bond. That good-bye embrace at the hotel was awfully long if she was just going to see him again in 1/2 hour. Like M said, she probably knew she was going to die. That's why she left the note for Bond. She locked the elevator door and kissed Bond's hand lovingly goodbye. There was no escape: she knew she couldn't have Bond again after what she did. She was headed for life in prison anyway. And really, could any of us go on living w/o Bond?!!


I don't know. THat was my take. My g/f thought Vesper's Algerian b/f was kidnapped mid-film somewhere, revealed to her for the first time in the torture chamber, and that her motivations in getting the money were to save the Algerian b/f first and foremost. My g/f thinks Vesper was legit until the torture champber, and that White's group could not possibly have known that Vesper would be assigned to accompany Bond to the card game, and thus they had no motivation to kidnap her b/f until she became a central figure with access to the money. And she radically turned on the charm to Bond after they escape the torture--that's because she now had reason to. She has to do that to save her Algerian b/f.

But I can't accept that Vesper would or could bargain for Bond's life when they already had her motivated by her boyfreind's kidnapping, or that Mr. White would kidnap Vesper's b/f somewhere in the brief time after she gets assigned to the card game and before White sets out for LeChiffre and the torture chamber.

The debate will never be settled. (Unless we see what Haggis eliminated from the script!)

Edited by SFKLR, 24 November 2006 - 09:37 PM.