BRmovie.com: Blade Runner Souvenir Magazine - Official Collector's Edition

It's clear that Deckard doesn't think very much about women at all. He's the type of guy that would see them occasionally but not have any use for them around the house. He has a wife and child but they seem to have gone in search of a better life. Deckard acknowledges at Rachael's first appearance that she is attractive. But then she becomes a puzzle and, when he figures out she is a replicant, he seems to have no furhter use for her. He sees rachael as a zero. But her display of emotion, even thought he knows it's false, implanted, pulls him out of his despair. As he begins to become involved with her, he is forced to confront what's really going on around him.
- HARRISON FORD

Top Right: Deckard puzzles over the photographs he found in Leon's apartment, wondering if the replicants can actually feel the same emotions as humans.

Right: Deckard and Rachael - an unusual romance.

Rachael and Deckard's relationship is a major issue of the film. Deckard has spent his entire adult career tracking down replicants whom he has killed or arrested. All of a sudden he is falling in love with one of them. That is "Deckard's dilemma." Rachael, on the other hand, has to come to grips with the reality that all her thoughts have been created out of someone else's mind, someone else's memory. the prospect of dying is very real, not only because of the 4 year lifespan, but because she knows it's Deckard's job to kill her. This is a very human, emotional situation.

Two people have to deal with extremely important, difficult things and work it out in a very short time. In the love scene Rachael is apprehensive because she's not sure what to do, she doesn't know if whe's relying on someone else's memeory. She resists and is frightened of Deckard's prejudices. But Deckard is just trying to say "Hold on, you're okay. I'm doing this because I want to and because I care about you."
- KATHERINE HABER