'Pretty Woman' Julia Roberts turns 55; here's revisiting her best known film

Do you remember how  many times you have seen Garry Marshall’s Pretty Woman? I don’t. Last night, I sobbed through it again. Why sob, I wonder! Pretty Woman is not a sad film. It is  a very happy romcom about a  very happy hooker, who spends a week with a business tycoon in Los Angeles, falls in love with him, and…well, we all know the rest.

Initially, Pretty Woman was conceived as a not-so-pretty film about a junkie heroine and a  moneyed stud, who uses her services for a week, and then dumps her.

Garry Marshall, God bless his ebullient soul, decided to turn the original film into a fairytale  romance…thankfully! I couldn’t bear to think of Julia Roberts suffering. What she gives us in Vivian is a sex worker who never allows melancholic thoughts to bog her down.

In one of the many memorable sequences, Vivian goes shopping in a high-end store in LA  where the snooty saleswomen patronize and insult her. Does she cry? No. She smiles and swallows her hurt. The sequence was shamelessly ripped off by the master-plagiarists Abbas Mustan in Chori Chori Chupke Chupke . As a wise man once said, you can take Pretty Woman  to a hundred places, but she will come back to Garry Marshall and Richard Gere.

It is hard to imagine any two  other actors from any part of the world from any era as the millionaire Edward and the hooker Vivian. Or for that matter, anyone except Hector Elizondo as the sympathetic hotel manager. Incredibly, Vivian’s roles was turned down by dozens of actresses, including Karen Allen, Molly Ringwald, Winona Ryder, Drew Barrymore, Brooke Shields, Uma Thurman, Diane Lane, Michelle Pfeiffer, Darryl Hannah, Kristin Davis.

For Gere’s role, Disney wanted Christopher Reeve, Daniel Day-Lewis, Kevin Kline, Denzel Washington, Albert Brooks, Al Pacino, Burt Reynolds ,Sam Neill, Tom Conti and Charles Grodin.

It was Julia Roberts who convinced Richard Gere, who, I am sure, never regretted his decision. Pretty Woman has a blithe heart and an effervescent soul. It’s about a hunky tycoon and a super-sexy hooker. Insanely good-looking both. But there is no nudity, although plenty of sex, Oh yes! But it’s not sex that joins Edward and Vivian at the hip. It is something far  beyond, something so intangibly soul-defining that it would take poets and scientists to define their relationship.

Roberts and Gere make Edward and Vivian’s time together so precious that we know before they do, that they are made for each other. True love has never been more emphatically   etched on celluloid. The moments when the heart is hurt are so hurtful you grieve for Vivian. Roberts plays her fragile and yet strong. This is a woman who can take the whiplashes of destiny on her chin, so bring them on.

What I noticed this time, something that Julia Roberts never allowed me to notice earlier, is  how quietly effective Richard Gere is in showing a man quietly surrendering to that thing called love. My favorite moment in this endlessly enchanting rom-com is with Hector Elizondo, who looks at a priceless neckpiece and says to Edward, “Sometimes, it is really  difficult to give up something so beautiful.”

We know what he means. Edward knows it too. He reaches out for love as Roxette sings the  imperishable “It Must Have Been.”

Pretty Woman is as long-legged as its leading lady. And just as timeless. Julie Roberts did four other films with Richard Gere. But none as career-defining as Pretty Woman.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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