Princess Vivian and Prince Edward Save Each Other

Rating: 10/10 (28 July 2007)

The economic monsters of the 1980s and 1990s included vast corporate take-overs for the purpose of the selling off of corporate assets. Frequently the assets separately were more valuable than the corporate whole. That this lead to economic dislocation for the employees of the corporations rarely was considered by the men who planned and carried out the raids and takeovers.
Three films really got involved in this matter. They were WALL STREET, wherein "Gordon Gecko" (Michael Douglas)told an audience of stockholders that "greed is good" and that it might even save the United States! A more balanced version was presented by Danny DeVito as "Larry the Liquidator" in OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY.
Then came this nice little fairy tale, mixing the world of Cinderella with the world of Dow Jones and some Freud. PRETTY WOMEN is probably the most popular of the three films, because Julia Robert's "Vivian Ward" humanizes the corporate raider "Edward Lewis" (Richard Gere) and thus they manage to save each other.
Economic realities remain in PRETTY WOMEN. Vivian, and her pal Kit De Luca (Laura San Giacomo) are hookers. They both are smarter than most but they are at the mercy of mean streets, mean Johns, and possibly mean pimps. Ironically they both work in Hollywood, only blocks away from the super rich.
One night Vivian is picked up by a man in a fancy sports car. It is Edward, who is planning a hostile take-over of a ship building empire owned by James Morse (Ralph Bellamy), with the assistance of his long-time legal aide Philip Stuckey (Jason Alexander). Edward has just left one of Stuckey's parties (Stuckey tries to be as ingratiating to the aloof Edward as he can - and mistakenly thinks he has succeeded in being so). Needing real release, Edward takes Vivian to his hotel suite.
What begins as a paid trick ends differently. FVivian is able to lighten Edward's spirits slowly so that he enjoys her for her company as well as the sex. Then the corporate raid gets so complex that Edward has to take an entire week to conclude it. Edward offers Vivian a chance to make a small fortune if she will stay with him for the week. After some bargaining (which she is good at) she agrees.
She learns that having money does not mean being acceptable. She is asked to get some fancy dinner clothing for a meeting with Morse and his grandson David (Alex Hyde-White). She tries to get the clothing at a snobbish store on Rodeo Drive, and is humiliated by the hostile staff. Subsequently she also has a brief problem with the manager of the hotel Barney Thompson (Hector Elizondo), but it clears up when members of the staff vouch for her being with Edward. Subsequently Barney turns out to be sympathetic to Vivian's needs for assistance for getting a decent dress and for learning proper eating etiquette. When Edward learns about the nastiness of the staff at the snobbish store he assists Vivian in getting more fancy clothing, and Vivian has a choice moment of revenge on the snobs.
Edward is soon planning how to force Morse to the wall, but Stuckey is curious about a type of distance in this business deal that is developing between Edward and the project, and (worse to Stuckey) between Edward and him. Edward is soon spending increasing times away to be with Vivian. While much of their time is between the sheets, they also are enjoying each other's company and she is teaching him to ease up and release his human side.
He explains to her that his business habits were based on a hatred of his father, a man who deserted his mother and Edward for another woman. After Edward's mother died, Edward went to work to make himself into the corporate raider he became, and his first great victory was the destruction of his father's company. He has been repeating this success ever since - but (despite one small victory due to therapy) he is not a happy person.
Vivian explains that she grew up in an unhappy poor family, and she left to try to improve herself, but she never graduated high school (despite being quite sharp). She also has always dreamed of one day finding a man who could rescue her - her image of him based on how her mother would lock her in a closet as punishment and her knight/prince would come to release her.
The fairy tale element in the film frequently hides the Freudian image of both leads - neither having had happy childhoods. We never learn of Vivian's relations with her Dad, but she and her mother were quite at odds. We know that Edward blamed his father for the death (soon after his father's desertion) of Edward's mother. Both are strong, capable figures, but both are desperately unhappy ones.
As the film heads to it's conclusions (there are several) we realize they should be together - neither will ever fully function well without the other (although they would both survive). But they have to overcome their equal repugnance at each other's lifestyle: Vivian has to get Edward away from constantly destroying his father again and again by corporate raiding (especially after she meets the Morses), and Edward keeps wanting to get Vivian off those mean streets - but keeps fumbling trying to overcome his dislike of her being a prostitute.
The film succeeds as the two characters break with their pasts. In the end corporate raiding and prostitution are discarded (not only by the main characters, but Vivian even pushes Kit towards cleaning up her act), and the last image of Edward and Vivian holding each other for support on an old building's fire escape. We know they'll make it.