oh THAT movie
We All Have The Movie. The One We're Supposed to Hate. Talk About... In Depth. Spoil it and explain WHY you love it despite mostly everyone else.
Ok, so maybe it’s not a “hated” movie, but even worse, it draws mixed reviews high to low and everything in between, averaging out to a mediocre 5/10 rating on ImdB.
This movie has everything you could possibly ask for:
Murder. (turns out to not be a murder in the end)
Intrigue.
Paris.
A ham sandwich.
(I’m talking about the 1994 movie Prêt a Porter, or Ready to Wear. Much of the movie is in French or Italian, so you have to watch the subtitles. Several intertwined story lines that take place over fashion week in Paris are documented.)
Love triangles (hm. well, more like interlocking love geometry).
Conspiracy.
Goofy Americans in Paris.
(Oh, the antics that follow when a jet-lagged “I really shouldn’t drink” Julia Roberts and sportswriter Tim Robbins are forced to share a hotel room! Plus, Kim Basinger plays a goofy reporter with a southern accent.)
Cowboy boots.
(Lyle Lovett appears, more or less as himself.)
Naked fashion models.
People stepping in dog poop.
(It’s Paris after all.)
Cross-dressers.
Tracey Ullman in a giant hat.
All these compelling reasons aside, I love, love, love this movie because the indirect star of the show is the glorious, scintillating, incomparable Sophia Loren. She is as luminescent in this movie of 1994 as she was in the 70’s. She plays the wife of the influential fashion guy who is “murdered” (not really) at the beginning of the story. She is then sought after by an old lover who throughout the movie desperately pushes his way through crowds, breaks into hotel rooms to steal and tailor other men’s jackets just to get close enough to her to set up a rendezvous. They finally get together and he falls asleep at a critical moment. “2 husbands, 2 corpses” she writes on the note she leaves for him.
Then come the really surprising cameos.
Harry Belafonte. What?
Cher. What?
David Copperfield. What?
In short, if you want to see some of the original supermodels appearing as themselves, like Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Björk, then this is the movie for you! Even the fashion designers play themselves (LaCroix, Trussardi, Gaultier, Ferre, Miyake) which always leaves me wondering how much of this movie was movie and how much was documentary.
Ok, so maybe it’s not a “hated” movie, but even worse, it draws mixed reviews high to low and everything in between, averaging out to a mediocre 5/10 rating on ImdB.
This movie has everything you could possibly ask for:
Murder. (turns out to not be a murder in the end)
Intrigue.
Paris.
A ham sandwich.
(I’m talking about the 1994 movie Prêt a Porter, or Ready to Wear. Much of the movie is in French or Italian, so you have to watch the subtitles. Several intertwined story lines that take place over fashion week in Paris are documented.)
Love triangles (hm. well, more like interlocking love geometry).
Conspiracy.
Goofy Americans in Paris.
(Oh, the antics that follow when a jet-lagged “I really shouldn’t drink” Julia Roberts and sportswriter Tim Robbins are forced to share a hotel room! Plus, Kim Basinger plays a goofy reporter with a southern accent.)
Cowboy boots.
(Lyle Lovett appears, more or less as himself.)
Naked fashion models.
People stepping in dog poop.
(It’s Paris after all.)
Cross-dressers.
Tracey Ullman in a giant hat.
All these compelling reasons aside, I love, love, love this movie because the indirect star of the show is the glorious, scintillating, incomparable Sophia Loren. She is as luminescent in this movie of 1994 as she was in the 70’s. She plays the wife of the influential fashion guy who is “murdered” (not really) at the beginning of the story. She is then sought after by an old lover who throughout the movie desperately pushes his way through crowds, breaks into hotel rooms to steal and tailor other men’s jackets just to get close enough to her to set up a rendezvous. They finally get together and he falls asleep at a critical moment. “2 husbands, 2 corpses” she writes on the note she leaves for him.
Then come the really surprising cameos.
Harry Belafonte. What?
Cher. What?
David Copperfield. What?
In short, if you want to see some of the original supermodels appearing as themselves, like Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Björk, then this is the movie for you! Even the fashion designers play themselves (LaCroix, Trussardi, Gaultier, Ferre, Miyake) which always leaves me wondering how much of this movie was movie and how much was documentary.