Siren wrote:I think the movie could be a metaphor for a girl becoming a woman.
She fell in lust with Edward. She was so desperate for a man, the moment she landed in one's lap, literally, she figured, he was the one. Like many people feel with their first love. They don't know how relationships go, how they feel, how and when to convey their feelings properly and are often over zealous. Edward and Giselle were both this way. Both were SO desperate to find love, they fell in lust with the first one they saw.
Jump to New York and Giselle meets Robert. Still very much a girl. But the more time she spends with him, the more she actually gets to know him, she finds out what love really is. Its not "we'll be married in the morning!", its more powerful than that. Its pure happiness, even anger. She got angry at Robert. He in a way, was helping her grow into a woman.
If she stayed with Edward, she may have eventually actually fallen in love with him, but it wouldn't have been the same kind of love. I don't think she would have grown as much as she did with Robert.
I agree about the metaphor, but I think that it's different within the film for the characters themselves. I mean, I think things work differently for the animated characters in their world. In our world, love at first sight is rarely more than lust/infatuation (not that most relationships don't start that way, it's how people tend to get together if not through school or work), but in the cartoon world it supposedly really does lead to happily ever after. So, if Giselle had never left the cartoon world, she would probably have been quite happy with Edward. That is, if he was the one she was really meant for. It's sort of like they were made/drawn for each other, as we know toons and their mates usually are. But, after coming to the real world, she changed/became more real and then needed a deeper connection with her mate rather than such a simple, 2D kind of love. I know that is basically what you're saying, but I guess my problem is with calling her love at first sight just lust/infatuation, when I think that's the way love works in her world.
Of course, some have suggested that the man she was intended to be with from the beginning was Robert. If their love was as predestined as she thought her love for Edward was, then it was just a case of mistaken identity that she was after Edward and things happily got cleared up when she had to "figure out" which one she really loved. And she didn't really do that very well, since it took the "true love's kiss" to really settle the matter for her. Though, she did say she knew it already...
Anyway, my point is that with toons the whole falling into someone's arms and falling instantly in love thing really does seem to work, so I think things just work differently for them, and Giselle was just expecting what seems to be the normal life pattern for a toon like her. In fact, it worked that way for Giselle too (she fell into Robert's arms later), it just happened that Edward came into the picture first. So, either the film is a really smart story of a girl "growing up", or it's just a really cute fairytale about mix-ups a la "A Midsummer Night's Dream", but it could still be seen as the mataphor you described of course.
Edit: Whoops, it seems Disney Princess Ariellen covered that fairly well before me, ha. Sorry.
She was in love with the idea of being in love and figured she would indeed fall in love with the first man she met (and Edward thought the same about the first woman he met). I don't think she was yet aware of what 'lust' would even mean. Her giddiness over getting to marry Edward seems to come from a much more innocent place than suggested by "lust." 
)
He was giving it all to Giselle and paying for all her crap while she was there! 
