Relationship
Frank and April have a complicated relationship throughout the film. This is symbolized in the early minutes of the film by two contradictory events. The moment they first meet, we see them slow dancing and laughing while talking to each other. And few moments after that Frank and April are shown fighting with each other after April’s play fails. Both the dance and fight scene symbolizes a different aspect of their relationship.
Paris
Both Frank and April seem unfulfilled by their lives. April doesn’t like her daily routine and Frank hates his job, that he also thinks is boring. When April suddenly proposes the idea of Paris and Frank agrees, this gives both of them hope of escape. Here, the idea of Paris symbolically represents their hopes of escaping their mundane lives. It symbolizes their hatred for their current life and their desire of wanting to go someplace where they can find a meaningful life.
Crazy Friends
When April and Frank are introduced to John, they seem to get along really well. They agree with each other on the hopeless emptiness that is present in their lives. This friendship of sorts with John, who is deemed crazy, symbolizes the unconventional or even crazy people that Frank and April are. This becomes apparent when John reads Frank and April like a book when Frank mentions they are no longer going to Paris. They themselves aren’t as sane and well-tempered a couple as everyone else deems them to be.
Façade
After John manages to provoke Frank, we see Frank and April getting into another heated argument. This time April runs away from the house towards the woods. Frank tries to bring her back but she turns him away saying she needs time to think. When Frank sees April returning through the window, he gets up relieved. But April doesn’t return to the house instead goes to the side and smokes a cigarette while leaning against a tree. This act of not returning directly to her house symbolizes how April is no longer interested in playing house. This becomes clear when she puts up a façade in front of her husband by giving him a breakfast that a conventional wife would, while inside she is about ready to kill herself.
