another film-from-the-eighties thread: Pretty Woman

[speakingwoman]

followng the Private Benjamin re-appreciation thread - did anyone see Pretty Woman last night?

I first watched it when I was 16.

I have to say, it was 100 times better than I expected and I'd recommended it. Roberts moves her long body like my lanky 15 year old moves his - like she doesn't know what to do with all that length. it's such clever acting - makes you feel so protective towards her.

Pretty Woman was made in 1990!

I don't like Dickens because of the way he treated his wife. Entitled arse is the first thing that comes to mind. He is reminiscent of woke today.

Similarly with Hardy. Is there a more obnoxious character than Angel Clare?

Francine,

today there are alternatives as in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Hunger Games but there still seems to be the sense that the woman must be punished, if only be being miserable all the time! Hunger Games just depicts the woman having all the responsibility for other people's problems!

You can be a shit and still do good though (Nelson Mandela, etc)

But not if you're married to him speakingwoman

indeed placemats.

Good and faithful husband who writes thinly disguised child porn in plain sight like Nabokov?
or shit husband who changes the lives of millions for the better like Dickens?

sorry, meant to add - women are between rock and hard place with men like these.....

I actually saw Pretty Woman for the first time just recently. I came away saying "Oh, wasn't that nice--but that woman was a prostitute! How can anything good come out of that?" That's my abiding memory, that it was all fun and games, and yet with an absolutely vile premise. And just to add to the fun, he has to be not just a guy, but a super rich guy. Is the audience just supposed to know about their circumstances, and still believe a worthwhile relationship can follow from it?

I think your attribute to social change solely by Dickens is disingenuous and disregards the work of thousands of people to bring about equality - most of them women.

Well this thread started weird but has got interesting. I only recently learnt what a shit of a husband Charles Dickens was.

I thought Lolita was an amazing book - deeply disturbing yes, but brilliantly written and gave me an insight into something so dark I'd have no other way of learning about it. However, based on PPs comments I'm tempted to read it again and see if my opinion has changed. It must be 10 years since I read it last.

Dickens was hugely influential in bringing about social change!!

Isn’t there some guff about it being her first night working as a prostitute? And therefore The implication is that she is ‘unsullied’ enough for Richard Gere to be interested.

It’s an update of Pygmalion. Julia is gradually ‘civilised’by RG do they she can ‘pass’ in civil society (although retains that pixie dream girl wildness which hints that she is still uncivilised in the bedroom unlike the buttoned up ladies she encounters on her journey)

In the end - instead of riding off into the sunset she is seduced again by RG. And she is acceptable now as she has been civilised, is sophisticated and acceptable.

Stories where the man has all the money and all the power--when will the world get tired of them?

My Fair Lady - that’s the other one.

I do enjoy the Rodeo Drive bit though - it’s very cathartic

PW is very watchable because Julia Roberts and Richard Gere are amazing in it - their chemistry is perhaps the best I've ever seen in a film.

For a while it was fashionable in film studies courses to analyse PW as some kind of deep and meaningful comment on the film industry as a whole, noting that it was a rom com flip around on American Gigolo, Richard Gere's breakthrough film (and one of the first mainstream films to show full frontal male nudity).

The ending (where the drunk guy outside the apartment shouts “Welcome to Hollywood! What's your dream? Everybody comes here; this is Hollywood, land of dreams. Some dreams come true, some don’t, but keep on dreamin’—this is Hollywood. Always time to dream, so keep on dreamin’.”) was also pored over.

But ultimately, it's a Happy Hooker with a Heart of Gold film, which can surely never be OK except for the most lib fem feminist contingent. Especially as there are little glimpses remaining of the original, darker story such as when Vivian is attacked by Edward's business partner and she comments that men "always know how to hit a woman across the cheek"

I was a little distracted by the fact that the business partner was George from Seinfeld.

Trollope's Can you Forgive Her? has been mentioned. It has a more realistic depiction of life as a prostitute than Pretty Woman

Tiny I think you're right about it being Vivian's first night on the street- so yes she was unsullied.

I agree with your point about the "buttoned up ladies". It is misogynistic in the way it pitches her against other women. If Vivien had been true to her character she wouldn't have gone out of her way to go back and taunt the saleswomen.

The shop scene could have been done by Vivian being refused entry to the shop by a doorman. That would mean of course they don't get the opportunity to portray women as (in the words of another poster, as it is not a word I would ever use to describe a woman) "bitches".

Similarly with Hardy. Is there a more obnoxious character than Angel Clare?

Sergeant Troy runs him a close second in Hardy's work.

Amber - just skim read the original script. Much, much darker and rather more interesting.

Missing the point entirely but it wasn't her first night as a prostitute. She tells RG about her first time and how she cried and after that it got easier as she got some regulars, implying that she has been doing it for awhile.

“something so dark I'd have no other way of learning about it.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way.

Did not know about the film studies pretentiousness wimple. Seems a bit ott.

I thought the line you quoted about being hit was very powerful. He NAMALTed in reply...

Fermat/Amber , yes the original ending of 3,000 is grim.

I've been watching clips on YouTube. Julia Roberts is beautiful but the film itself is worse than I remembered- starting with the trailer -where she talks about always dreaming when she was a little girl of being rescued from a tower by a prince.

I know the ultimate female career aspiration on FWR is something in STEM but the script didn't even allow her to dream about something which was achievable, given her beauty, like being a model or an actress.

I watched the first half an hour last night and it seemed very dated.
I remember being allowed to watch it at a friends house when I was primary school aged probably older end of primary. I certainly wouldn't let my daughter watch it till she was a teenager at least.

I didn't think it was her first night out? I'm sure I remember a conversation where she's talking about her first night and then going home and crying about it.
Didn't like the film though, it felt like Cinderella only worse.