WARNING! MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW.
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The quick scene at the end with her standing on the balcony of another vacation home waving at the real daughter is a scene of her real time on vacation to write the book that we just witnessed.
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I'm not so sure. When Sarah and the real Julie pass each other in the publisher's office at the end of the film, Julie doesn't acknowledge Sarah and doesn't seem to recognize her. If they'd spent time at the summer house together, there'd be more of a reaction. I think that shot is yet another peek inside of Sarah's imagination; she's "inserting" the real Julie into one of the scenarios she'd imagined as a way of trying her out. And having done so, she edits back in her imaginary creation, who is much more interesting (which is why the last shot of Julie is of Ludivine Sagnier).
I also don't think the book that Sarah hands her publisher is the story we've just witnessed, despite the fact that it has the same title as the movie. From his comments and reactions, it appears that she's written a romance of some sort. And when Julie hands Sarah her late mother's novel, she tells Sarah to use it, and we subsequently see Sarah typing away with the manuscript open before her. I think that the novel Sarah publishes is the romance novel that, in Sarah's imagination, Julie's mother created and her husband (Sarah's publisher) rejected, just as he later rejects it when Sarah gives him the manuscript. Of all the elements in the elaborate fantasy that the film turns out to be, the one that most intrigues Sarah is the story of Julie's mother; that's what she's talking about when she tells Julie that "when someone keeps an entire part of their life hidden, it's fascinating".
What we see in the film is nothing more than Sarah's
preparation for writing the novel she turns in at the end. To break herself out of the formula of writing the genre fiction that has been her bread and butter, she concocts an elaborate fictional world that finally leads her to something she truly finds fascinating. But by the end, I think she's already starting to figure out a way to use the fictional Julie and her adventures; I suspect that's the reason for the slightly devilish smile she gives her publisher when she tells him to wait for her next book.
BTW, my spoiler-free review is in the
2003 Alternative Film thread.
M.