In "Sleeping with the enemy" Julia Roberts should have done the Freedom Programme

[FlemCandango]

That creepy drama teacher bloke she meets is awful. He has hideous hair and beard, terrible clothes for starters. But far worse he creeped on her from the start when he was all weird about her picking fucking apples. He implies out she has to do sexual favours for the apples. Then when she understandably drops the apples he comes over uninvited and asks her to dinner and that she needs to bring apple pie for pud. I found it very hard to believe she went round there! Then cue intrusive questions, controlling behaviour, gets her a job so she is in his debt, waits for her outside her job, basically stalkery behaviour, and ignoring her boundaries... Ugh.

She needed to tell the hairy fucker to do one and take his apples and shove them up his hoop.

Aibu?

YANBU always thought it was a bit odd painting him as the 'good guy'

Agreed. The last thing she should have been doing is getting into any relationship. Let alone with another creepy guy.

Terrible move. I did love the beach house though.

What a strange thread 🧵

I love that film! 😊

I just put the film on randomly while making dinner. I got as far as her exciting escape from her evil mustach twirling git of a husband, then minutes later she is in a situationship with a hairy drama teacher and I had to turn it off! Does not age well that film.

I think a lot of films from that era are weird about who the "hero" is and what's supposed to make women happy. Pretty Woman is awful (although I loved it at the time) and Love Actually is about stalking.

Oh yes that Beach house was stunning (as was the one in Basic Instinct)

Patrick Bergin was chilling.

The idiotic women from the swimming classes completely giving the game away though 🤨

My burning question is - How could she, after planning her escape for months down to the nth degree, be so daft as to think a wedding ring would disappear if she flushed it down the loo?

Yeh when she flushed the ring I was 🙄that is not going down. She could have sold it for 💰

Loved the house. Yes that scene about the apples very weird.

Always hated Pretty Woman. Julia Roberts was lovely always but so many of the film roles she got were just abysmal.

She needed to tell the hairy fucker to do one and take his apples and shove them up his hoop.

I thought the same

Especially when she freaked out on the stairs and he took it personally and got a bit arsey.

He should have taken the hint and fucked off when she dropped the apples rather than speak to him

I agree that hairy teacher man was far too full on and creepy after she'd escaped such a psycho husband! She definitely should have stayed single for a long while after that! Agree about flushing the ring down the toilet, how stupid, but it made one of the major 'clues' which was filmworthy for the time

Actually thinking in general about all of the films based along this sort of theme.. it's almost commonplace now that the bloke is the nasty one and the woman has to go through hell/escape him/take up martial arts/buy a gun/get a disguise. With so many people watching these sorts of films for entertainment I wonder if it was normalised abusive behavior in men when it's on the TV so much? But I guess that's a subject for a whole new thread..

It is just a very different experience watching these films as a woman in my 40s. I see how badly these melodramatic, "abused woman escapes and gets retribution/ new man" films have aged. So many missed opportunities for more engaging stories and fewer toxic relationships... Are there any good examples of this genre, or are they like the misery memoir books doomed to be trashy and exploitative?

Sadly it all seemed normal 30 years ago. These films do sometimes highlight how much things have changed. Not enough for 30 years but there has been change.

I watched a few episodes of the original Miami Vice the other week, watching my teen crush now, Sonny Crockett, he was a slimey creep! Used to think he was such a good guy.