Rita Hayworth once said something along the lines of "Men go to bed with Gilda but wake up with me," referring to her famous glamorous character from the movie of the same name and the fact that men went to bed with their dream version of her but woke up with the reality. Not being the glamorous movie star myself, I have more often found a flip side of that to be true -- men fall for the quirky, independent, fun, let's-not-say-crazy-but-okay-kind-of-crazy girl but then expect the serious, just-like-their-own-mom homemaker personality whenever it's at their convenience. I love Breakfast at Tiffany's, but I can't say I've ever really been on board with the ending. I'm kind of on board with Holly in her opinion that Paul wants to control her and stifle/limit/own her free spirit. The movie has a happy ending, but does anyone really see that relationship lasting? What's Holly going to do all day? We've seen she is most definitely not happy as a housewife/ homebody, and it's not like she has a career planned out. Isn't Paul going to want her to be a housewife just like José did? In the end, I have to admit I'm of the opinion that Holly and Cat or Holly and O.J. are actually a better match for each other than Holly and Paul. There are of course movies where it's true of women towards men as well. Isn't that what Mrs. Doubtfire is all about? Ostensibly it's about a man dressing as a woman, and it's definitely about a father fighting for his children... but underneath all that it's also about a relationship in which the wife decides it's the very thing she fell in love with about her husband that is now always getting on her nerves.
Yesterday I was watching a Hallmark movie (have I not mentioned once or twice how much I love those? Seriously, if anyone wants to just cast me in one of those and let me live in Hallmarkland, I'd be cool with that) and was getting quite infuriated with the movie's treatment of the parents of the main female character (this happens a lot when I watch Hallmark movies -- I tend to make a lot of very strongly opinionated statements throughout the film that, depending on my fiancé's mood, either make him shake his head, completely ignore me, or laugh -- I got all three reactions during this film). The mom, played wonderfully by Brenda Strong, is a vibrant, vivacious, passionate woman who is clearly nowhere near ready to retire. Her husband, who is seen doing nothing but reading, eating, and taking out trash throughout the course of the movie, really wants them to retire and go to Italy. Strong's character is very clear about the fact that she's not ready to retire and feels like retirement will make her "old." She likes the structure and purpose of her day and is not ready to give it up, though she very much loves her husband. And here's the problem -- despite his wife's very clear and repeated statements of not wanting to retire, he keeps planning their trip and saying how it's for them, how much she's going to love it, that it's just what they need. It's a given that wanting to go is "correct," and it's a question of what's wrong with her that she doesn't want to go.
I hate that.
The main plot of the film is that Strong's character is setting up her daughter with a successful, passionate pediatrician, and as mom and pediatrician have quite a bit more screen time together than daughter and pediatrician -- and all of that screen time is electric and very fun -- I kept rooting for the guy to actually fall in love with the mom rather than the daughter, and then they could settle down not-settling-down and enjoy their exciting and full lives together, far from retirement. Alas, the film's downfall is the same reason I love Hallmark -- their traditionalism -- and the movie of course ended with the pediatrician and the daughter together, and the mom -- surprise, surprise -- giving in and retiring and going to Italy. Boo.
Oh, and also, when he's not busy being mad at Strong's character for loving her life and wanting to continue it as it is, the husband is also mad when he finds out that they didn't meet passively by chance all those years ago but rather because she saw him, liked him, and so took matters into her own hands and did something. It's supposedly the very fact that she's such a passionate, active, alive woman that has made him fall in love with her; yet every time he faces those aspects of her personality, he's upset/angry/dejected/dismayed/disappointed about it.
Sure, sometimes you meet the beautiful, exotic, glamorous Gilda and you wake up to a different, more down-to-earth, "ordinary" reality…. But Gilda wasn't only beautiful, exotic, and glamorous -- she was also fiery, passionate, tempestuous, and impossible-to-handle... And sometimes that's also who you wake up to... so you better make sure you like and accept Gilda... in all sides of her personality.
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