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I didn't think there was any ambiguity at all.
She asked him, more or less: So does that fact that I'm your half- sister mean it's over? I can't have any more kids, if that's what's bothering you.
He said, more or less: If I met you for the first time today [meaning, knowing what I know now and didn't know before, that you're my half-sister], I'd still want to be with you. She gets a big relieved look on her face, they cuddle, film ends.
As for the incest thing which keeps coming up in this forum, including in one of the earlier posts on this string, I would submit that everyone will have to deal with that in light of his/her own moral outlook. Try to be open enough to realize that ther can in fact be more than one outlook on this subject. Significantly, where incest is taboo, it has tended to grow out of a taboo -- i.e., it has some sort of magical/mystical/religious underpinning. There have been societies in which incest was not taboo. (I'm not good enough on my Old Testament, but it stikes me that you can't get away from it in early Genesis, and in Pharonic Egypt and other god-king cultures incest was the standard practice for keeping those directly-descended-from-the-gods bloodlines pure). I suspect that there are people today for whom incest is not taboo.
It seems to me that, aside from the religious argument (which is not susceptible to rational attack and, therefore, cannot be the basis for making rational attacks), you've got 2 major arguments against incest.
First, the biological argument: it tends to produce a higher percentage of what may be called, politically-uncorrectly, defective offspring than does non-incestuous reproduction.
Second, the moral and/or psychological argument: the incest taboo helps keep horny male relatives from taking advantage of the relative proximity plus youth and/or physicical weakness of their daughers and sisters. (This is the part over which the judicial system got so upset at Woody Allen when there was no actual incest involved in his relationship with his then-wife's adopted daughter. In our society, completely aside from religion, it is not viewed as a healthy thing for people in a position of power to have sex with their subordinates because there is always the danger [and I'd say we've accpeted the idea of the acutal probability] that some sort of coercion -- psycholocial, financial, physical, whatever -- is being used. This is definitely not healthy for the victim, nor is it felt to be healthy for the perpatrator in that it teaches them things about being able to coerce/manipulate people, etc.)
In the case of Sam & Pilar, the biological argument is taken care of by Pilar's infertility. The moral/psychological problems relating to Sam's having Pilar at a disadvantage were never there because he never did have her at a disadvantage as far as this story line goes. They were brought up separately, and what they were able to get going as kids was done only with a great deal of mutual effort against strongly antagonistic parental pressures on each side. As for the final issue of their own moral outlooks on the taboo, they indicate that it's not a problem for them. So, to the extent that they're right about that, it's not a problem for them.
Let me ask of those for whom it is a problem on these facts what I think may be a real pernicious question. Had we cut out Sam's discovery of the biological relationship between them, and they had gone on to live happily ever after, would this be less of a problem for you? The relationship would have been just as incestuous, but they would not have known it. Assuming acceptance of the incest taboo, I guess the issue raised is one's reaction to the idea of sin without fault. Incest would be a sin, but would it be their fault if they didn't know it? And what sort of "dumping the sins of the father on the shoulders of the (otherwise innocent) son" theology are you buying into if the answer is yes. Of course, this may be just an additioanl variant of the original sin idea, but realize that original sin has been giving a lot of people a lot of trouble for a very long time.
So, does this mean that it's okay for brothers and sisters, when they come at it as independent adults past the age or capacity of reproduction, to act out any mutual incestuous fantasies that they may have been carrying around? Certainly not for anyone who accepts as part of his/her belief system an incest taboo. And certainly not for anyone, according to anyone who believes that incest is bad for everyone. However, I suspect that there are people out there, besides myself, who (even while seriously doubting that latter-day incest would work for them) can get through the day without being upset by the fact that Sam and Pilar aren't bothered by the fact that their relationship is in fact incestuous. To me, they were nice people whose biological relationship was accidental -- even more so than usual -- and, to the extent they could overlook it themselves, irrelevant. Personally ever since seeing the film, I've wished them well.
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