Under the Sand

The "traumatic event" in the film was when Jean suddenly disappears at the beach. They were on vacation and even though we only saw him briefly, he seemed very depressed. Marie was cheerful and didn't seem to make anything of it, but he didn't engage in conversation with her and there seemed to be some sexual tension. When they went to the beach he rubbed her back and made it seem like he was going to take a dip. When he never came back, though, it wasn't very shocking because it seemed like he was building up to leave her. We don't know what really happened, though, whether he really did drown or if he actually did just walk away from her to start over.
Marie forces herself to believe Jean never left her and nothing has changed. She talks about him still in the present tense and when her friends try to change the subject or confront her about the issue, she ignores them. There are several scenes where she comes home and "conversates" with Jean. We see him "hold" her and "sleep" with her. One morning she even refuses to go to work and "eats" breakfast with him because she would rather stay at home with him than go off to work. Every time she comes to reality and believes that he really is gone, she forces herself to be in the moment with him again. She is in denial and wont accept the truth. Even when her accountant tells her she is broke, she just says Jean will take care of it.
When Marie goes to the morgue to identify the body, she insists that she see it. The doctors tell her that it is an awful sight and it will traumatize her because the body is so mutilated, but she claims she needs to see it to come to acceptance. After they look at the body and the doctors show her the swim shorts and watch she just laughs. It was shocking when she did this because the situation is not funny at all and nobody could understand why she thought it to be so humiliating. She finally said that the watch was not Jean's and she should know because she was the one who bought it for him. It is unknown at this point whether or not the body was Jean because Marie claims it wasn't his watch, but the doctors say his dental records match up and they are 90% accurate.
At the end when Marie is alone on the beach and crying, I still wasn't clear whether she was lying and the watch really was his so he was dead, or if she was telling the truth and he really did leave her. In a way I felt that she had come to closure and finally was letting go because he left her to start a new life. He moved on and she should do the same. It was all really confusing, especially when she saw a man that appeared to be Jean. I was so excited as she was running to him because I wanted to see if it really was him or not, but then it just ended. So, for me, I still do not know what truly happened to Jean.