Bad Lies (2023): Ending Explained

Quick Recap

Bad Lies (2023), directed by João Canijo, unfolds as a tense family drama centered on five women entangled in the inheritance and management of a decaying hotel. The story follows a mother, daughter, and grandmother, along with two other relatives, as they navigate an "old and irresolvable conflict" marked by postponed conversations and unspoken resentments. Living and working together in this once-grand establishment, the women embody generations of emotional baggage, where the hotel serves not just as a backdrop but as a metaphorical prison amplifying their anxieties and sorrows.

Inspired by the psychological intensity of August Strindberg's works like Creditors, the film explores the raw dynamics of power, dependence, and unrequited love between mothers and daughters. The narrative delves into unresolved traumas, with the hotel's nostalgic architecture contrasting the claustrophobic interactions that trap the characters in cycles of confrontation and avoidance. As the women fight for the hotel's stability, their personal histories surface through heated dialogues and silent standoffs, revealing how familial bonds can both sustain and suffocate.

Leading into the finale, the mounting tensions reach a boiling point, forcing the protagonists to confront the emotional distress that has long simmered beneath the surface. The film's structure heightens this isolation, turning the hotel into a stage for existential conflicts that mirror broader human struggles with legacy, identity, and forgiveness—or the lack thereof.

What Happens in the Ending

The final scenes of Bad Lies culminate in a series of raw, unfiltered confrontations within the hotel's confines, where the women's postponed conversations finally erupt. As the struggle over the hotel's future intensifies, the mother, daughter, and grandmother engage in a climactic exchange in the lobby—a space that has symbolized both refuge and entrapment throughout the film. Words long held back spill out, exposing betrayals, regrets, and the weight of unrequited affections that have defined their relationships.

Literally, the ending sees no tidy resolution to the inheritance dispute; instead, the women scatter momentarily after the verbal onslaught, each retreating to different corners of the hotel. The daughter, in a moment of quiet defiance, packs a small bag, hinting at departure, while the grandmother clings to a faded photograph of the family's past. The mother stands alone in the dimly lit reception area, staring at the ledger of unpaid bills, as the camera lingers on the peeling wallpaper. A final, ambiguous shot shows the hotel's front door ajar, with footsteps echoing faintly outside, suggesting an uneasy stasis rather than escape or reconciliation. No one leaves permanently, and the film fades to black on the sound of distant waves crashing against the nearby shore, underscoring the inescapable pull of their shared history.

This sequence, drawn from the film's emphasis on claustrophobic interactions, avoids dramatic action, focusing instead on the psychological unraveling through dialogue and subtle gestures, leaving the hotel's fate—and the family's—hanging in precarious balance.

The Meaning Behind the Ending

At its core, the ending of Bad Lies represents the futility of seeking closure in deeply entrenched familial wounds, symbolizing how unresolved traumas persist like the hotel's structural decay. The ajar door serves as a potent metaphor for half-hearted attempts at freedom: it's an invitation to leave, yet no one fully crosses the threshold, mirroring the characters' internal paralysis. The crashing waves in the final audio cue evoke the relentless tide of emotions that the women cannot outrun, commenting on the cyclical nature of human suffering within family units.

Thematically, this conclusion underscores the film's exploration of existential conflict, where the hotel embodies not just isolation but the illusion of stability. By ending without resolution, Canijo highlights the moral complexity of dependence—how love and resentment intertwine, making true separation impossible. It's a subtle societal commentary on intergenerational trauma, particularly among women, who often bear the emotional labor of preserving legacies at great personal cost. The ending invites viewers to contemplate the human truth that some lies—those we tell ourselves about family harmony—persist because facing the truth demands a vulnerability few can sustain.

Character Arcs and Resolution

The main characters' journeys in Bad Lies arc toward a poignant, incomplete resolution that deepens their psychological profiles. The daughter, initially trapped in resentment toward her mother's controlling nature, reaches a tentative self-awareness during the final confrontation, voicing years of suppressed anger that reveals her arc from passive observer to active participant in the family's dysfunction. Yet, her packing of the bag without leaving signifies a stalled evolution, trapped by the same dependencies she rails against.

The mother, portrayed as the linchpin of unrequited love and power imbalances, confronts her role in perpetuating the cycle, her solitary moment with the ledger exposing a vulnerability that humanizes her arc from authoritative figure to weary guardian of a crumbling legacy. The grandmother, representing the generational root of these conflicts, clings to nostalgia, her arc culminating in quiet defeat that underscores the theme of fading influence amid inevitable change.

Overall, these arcs resolve not through transformation but through raw exposure, emphasizing the moral complexity of flawed individuals bound by blood. The ending affirms that character growth in such dynamics is incremental and fraught, leaving each woman altered yet tethered to their shared emotional prison.

Alternate Interpretations

The ambiguity of Bad Lies' ending lends itself to multiple readings, particularly around the ajar door and the echoing footsteps. One interpretation views it as a glimmer of hope: the footsteps could signal the daughter's actual departure, suggesting a break from the cycle and a reclamation of agency, aligning with the film's undercurrent of feminist resistance against suffocating maternal bonds. This reading posits the ending as subversive, implying that confrontation, however painful, paves the way for individual liberation.

Conversely, a more pessimistic lens sees the door as a false promise, with the footsteps belonging to a returning guest or even one of the women doubling back—reinforcing the hotel's role as an inescapable "emotional prison." Here, the ending critiques societal expectations of family unity, suggesting that unresolved conflicts doom the characters to perpetual stagnation, a nod to Strindberg-inspired fatalism. A third, psychological interpretation focuses on the internal: the open door symbolizes the characters' mental thresholds crossed in dialogue, achieving catharsis without physical change, highlighting how true resolution lies in acknowledgment rather than action.

These layers ensure the ending's richness, rewarding rewatches with evolving insights into the characters' psyches.

Themes and Symbolism

The ending reinforces Bad Lies' central themes of familial interdependence and the burdens of legacy, subverting expectations of redemptive closure common in family dramas. Symbolically, the hotel evolves from a nostalgic haven to a decaying monument of suppressed truths, its architecture mirroring the women's fractured psyches—beautiful yet crumbling under emotional weight. The ledger and photograph emerge as key symbols: the former represents the practical lies of financial stability masking deeper relational debts, while the latter evokes unhealed wounds from the past, subverting the idea of heritage as comfort.

Broader societal commentary shines through in the portrayal of women's intergenerational conflicts, challenging norms around silence and endurance. The film uses these elements to probe human truths about isolation in intimacy, suggesting that moral complexity arises not from malice but from the inescapable humanity of flawed connections. By lingering on auditory cues like waves and footsteps, Canijo subverts visual resolution, emphasizing how themes of anxiety and unrequited love echo indefinitely.

Final Thoughts

Bad Lies crafts an ending that lingers like an unfinished conversation, its subtlety amplifying the film's contemplative power. By embracing ambiguity over easy answers, it masterfully captures the moral intricacies of family life, making it a standout in psychological cinema. This conclusion works brilliantly because it trusts audiences to grapple with its depths, turning passive viewing into active reflection on our own relational "hotels"—spaces of beauty, pain, and unresolved lies. For those drawn to thematic richness over spectacle, it's a resonant triumph, though its lack of closure may frustrate viewers seeking catharsis. Ultimately, it reminds us that in the theater of human bonds, endings are rarely final.