Her intensely knit, querulous brow and her softly husky voice are yet another emblem of the kismet of brilliant casting. Alternately angry and hopeful, Rodriguez's Diana is a performance you can't imagine another actor surpassing. Rodriguez simmers, explodes. They share working class protagonists, earnest but unschooled, who talk, then perform themselves into a new understanding of themselves. The telling is taut and limber.
Movies ineluctably suggest fate and destiny, because they're finite narratives.
To me, Diana's moments of happiness are hard-won, and as in real life, things grow more complex once the lights go up, and we return to life and the characters seep into our memory. Predestined endings are part of the stuff of myth, and in under two hours, redemption, or the spectacle of life or love or good intentions dashed will remain necessary and worthwhile subject matter. Diana even finds an absurd but wondrous love. She is close enough to bite off Adrien's ear and when the clench breaks all they are supposed to do is batter, batter away at one another. A death match, whichever it may be.