Absolutely she doesn't fully understand, but she has found out that they're pretending to be other people with her. In fact, her first reaction was all about how her whole life was a lie and she kept poking at things in her own life to see how fake they were.

They don't have to be subtle about it. They're on their home turf.

Yup—good description. I read a comment from someone who also said that he reminds them of their father, and that with their father they felt that some of his anger and ranting was covering up any lingering insecurity about leaving. Alexei can't hear any negativity.

But he knows she's doing that, so it's not really a manipulation. She basically all but says "Hey, let's have sex rather than think about wheat production back home" and he thinks about it, decides yeah, he'd rather do that, and they have sex.

Maybe not anything for the Centre. He works for the Vietnamese government usually. I think he's just on loan for this.

I wondered if there might be a connection to Pasha and young immigrants who get radicalized after coming to the west. What with Tuan as an influence.

LOL! That's my canon now. Somewhere that investigation is happening.

I didn't actually hear it myself, but once it was explained I figured okay, this is probably useful information for understanding where they're coming from with Tuan.

Wasn't the country united by 1976?

Yeah, I would never have known that if i hadn't heard about the explanation. Before that I did assume he was a real refugee who got radicalized after spending years here.

He was pretending to be a boat person. He referred to himself as a "boat person" sarcastically when saying how the foster family he stayed with thought themselves so kind to take in one. But the podcast clarified that he was with Vietnamese intelligence. He's not a refugee, he did not leave his country behind, he's…

I don't think the story he tells about his family being killed has to be a lie. He hates the US for it and now works for Vietnamese intelligence. He's not a refugee who left the country behind, he's like P&E. If his country's working with the USSR right now, he's for it

IKR? It's like…you do know you're supposed to be sneaky, right? If you just kill anybody who sees you, you're not really blending in.

He's probably not even working for the USSR. He's working with them for now, but he works for Vietnam.

Ah, understood. Agreed.

Somebody who was keeping watch for them.

But then, the reverse happened in the movie. You're watching Marion's story for the first part of the movie, then she disappears and you're with Norman.

We don't actually know for sure Alexei is doing that—the Soviets could just be wrong about this grain plot.

True—I really just meant more that she's the less flexible one. Steely is a good word for it. My point being just that the steelier person can just crack in different ways than the other one. And it might look different.

I don't think that's true at all. (Many would argue that the kid playing Paige is not that good of an actor yet they use her all the time.) I think there was just no reason to spend time on a kid that wasn't directly involved with the central story.