power struggle between Walter and Phyllis: sex, violence and murder

Walter tells Phyllis often to "shut up baby," always referring to her as "baby" and often cutting her off mid-speech. He tries to be a controlling male figure, feeling that he can handle the situation of getting away with murder better than her and that she will screw things up. He repeats to her the steps of driving from the train station to pick him up, even though she has memorized them. He sees her as inferior and a "weak link."

For the first two-thirds of the movie, Phyllis comes across as a clingy, dependent female, who is more attached and needy towards Walter than he is towards her. She is smarter than this, though - if she did not act so clingy and was instead nonchalant and withdrawn, distanced, Walter would have tried harder to obtain her. She would not have been able to achieve her other affair and solely financial intentions involving him as efficiently. Phyllis is in control of the situation and never even loves Walter (until she almost kills him), but uses him to get the insurance money from her husband's death and (it seems) run off with her stepdaughter's ex-boyfriend. The gun/murder scene between Phyllis and Walter is the consummation of this power struggle of their "love," or hatred, ironically - and, appropriate to the time period and its media's tendency to uphold patriarchal authority, Walter ultimately overcomes Phyllis, murdering her.

There is also a power struggle in the almost incestuous affairs of Walter and Phyllis with the younger lovers (Lola and her ex-boyfriend). Walter manipulates Lola at first to stop thinking that Phyllis and an unknown companion are behind the murder, because he fears both his condemnation and Lola's contempt of him. Later, he manipulates Lola to believe in her inclination that Phyllis and her own ex-boyfriend are implicated in it together, as this clears Walter. Phyllis manipulates the ex-boyfriend by telling him that Lola doesn't love him anymore, so that he will stay out of contact with Lola and be drawn towards her, instead. Phyllis and Walter both use their age and twisted wisdom to overpower these younger individuals for arguably sexual reasons (at least involving flirtation and self-fulfillment).

Some symbols of sexual dysfunction in the movie are the broken foot of Phyllis' husband - this shows his inferiority, his emasculation, and his older and decrepit state. He cannot and does not "perform" for Phyllis, and this is what she argues draws her towards the younger, healthier, and more libidinous Walter. When the car almost doesn't start during the runaway from the murder scene, this symbolically demonstrates (foreshadows) the failure of the sexual relationship between Phyllis and Walter. There is a lot of looking through windows, especially by Walter, which demonstrates voyeurism and the desire for what is not possessed. Doors and blinds are shut often, to show the need for privacy during the sexual act (and the parallel between that and the murderous act), especially one of adultery. The fact that Phyllis and Walter discuss murder in the supermarket, next to baby products, juxtaposes death and birth, along with death and the "fruit of the sexual act." These relationships are complicated and intertwined, just as the relationship between Phyllis and Walter. The intended outcome (as it occurs to Walter and the audience, at least) is shot down, literally, by Phyllis' larger murder plans - she kills sex, kills people, and figuratively kills babies and "the family" (a stretch, but a point for debate).

The recurrent comments about making the murder "clean" and "straight down the line" are also used to comment about the path towards love between Phyllis and Walter. Because their "love" affair ultimately ends in murder, the sexual act is linked to murder, specifically the clean and straight shooting of a gun. This is not only an overt Freudian symbol for the sexual act, but complicates the lovers' relationship in that it is, from the beginning, a path of manipulation and death, through Phyllis' intentions. She "wields the gun" and the power for most of the movie (despite dramatic irony, the audience and Walter not knowing about it) but that gun is taken from her in the end.