And is the girl believable?

Sometimes we (have to) lie to or save our skin to escape …

Bernard

I think lying is the natural disposition of us, humans. We always tend to look for our advantage; telling a coloured truth comes very easy then.

@Mieke
A colored story or truth is not necessary a lie.

The reason I lie is purely to keep control.

Bernard

A fictionalized truth then?
Isn't there always at least a small space, distance between words and the underlying reality?

Lying and women... a match made in heaven.

Sasja

Go see the movie.

As for the real event – the young woman managed to fool everybody (police, the president, NGO’s etc.) before she got unmasked.

I did not see the movie, but just as a demonstration of ‘We are lying, because we want to be loved.’
This in itself is not so surprising, indeed. So perhaps we can think of a way to make things more interesting. First, we have the story of a girl being attacked in the train. She comes home, in panic, injured and she tells, say, her boyfriend, what has happened to her. After a while everything turns out to be a lie, and her boyfriend asks her, why did you not tell me? She: ‘I want you to love me’. More or less, I suppose, as the movie.
But suppose the story begins again, this time she is really attacked, she comes home, in panic, injured and when her boyfriend asks her, what has happened to her, she replies, out of shame of her being attacked: ‘I am very tired, I had a long travel, etcetera. After a while she can no longer keep silent, and her boyfriend asks her, why did you not tell me? And she gives exactly the same answer: ‘I want you to love me’. What makes it interesting is that both are very plausible stories, in both stories there is a lie, with the same results.
Could we think of a combination of the two, in which one plus one makes two? Suppose we have a girl in the train, she finds herself in a predicament, but thinking that she can turn the situation to her advantage by playing the victim, she provokes her attackers, things go terribly wrong, she comes home, injured, etcetera, but keeps silent. But things go badly and after a while she confesses what has happened to her, and her boyfriend asks her why she did not tell him immediately. She: ‘Because I did not want to tell you about my hate for you, for every time you look at me, I see in your gaze the tender eyes of my rapist’. For me that would be the most interesting plot, but of course, that is just a matter of taste.

Johan

The movie is more complicated than you think. The real event as well I suppose.
But the movie suggests indeed that the girl believes that the victim is the one who is being loved. It all depends on the definition of “victim” of course.

I found it telling that you came up with rape. “An anti-Semitic incident” on train is not necessarily a rape – whether the victim is a woman or not.

In reality I assume we often lie to avoid confrontation, to save time and energy, to please. The desire to please is not exactly the same as the desire to be loved.

I often please people but I don’t want love in return.

@Mieke
Ok, but I would disagree that this makes the difference between truth an lie.
@Arnon
As ‘to whom belongs beauty’, ‘to whom belongs a beautiful mind’? You will be loved nevertheless.

Arnon

The word 'rape' is a bite crude, I was obviously not implying any association with the actual cause in the movie, and in the end, everything depends on the context.
There are obviously more reasons for lying as the wish to be loved; the wish not be loved being one of them.
I should see the movie.

I often please people but I don't want love in return

Arnon

People also try to please people they actually dislike.
I catch myself on doing it.

Pleasing

I agree, trying to please is not always a desire to be loved. But it still is a transaction, is it not? I have found myself trying to please as a power strategy. As in: If I can succesfully please the other, I gain power over that person. Or at least I feel less vulnerable. That is often an attractive bargain. To me, at least.

Desolation

It is worth noting that the movie is based on the 2005 play "RER" by Jean-Marie Besset.
http://www.tabletmag.com/arts-and-culture/24122/sympathy-pains/

"Wanting to be loved" is not quite adequate to explain the phenonemon of self-fabricated roles as victim/perpetrator. In any major crime story, almost always several people approach the police either claiming to have done the crime, or claiming to be an additional victim. There are also those who invent whole crimes. Does someone claim to be a serial murderer in order to be loved?

Of course these fantasists appear completely nuts to the mainstream of society. But there is a curious rationality to insanity. My guess would be that they feel such inner desolation that they hope to make a fantasized other existence real in some way. Perhaps it is related to the phenonemon of self-cutting, which seems to be a physical expression of feelings of intense inner despair.