MY MOVIE SHELF: Working Girl

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 132 Days to go: 92

Movie #308:  Working Girl

Has anyone ever thought about the title of this film? If there had been the Internet and Twitter in 1988, I’m sure there would’ve been a dozen clickbait thinkpieces on it, but I’ve no idea if it had ever really been discussed in the traditional formats of the day. Working girl is a term for a prostitute, as we all know, and while the movie Working Girl is not about a prostitute but about a woman trying to make it in corporate America, it is a clever little play on words about how difficult that actually is. Women (even today, not just way back in 1988) aren’t always taken seriously, are sometimes objectified, and are almost always required to play by men’s rules in order to get ahead. This particular working girl, in fact, (Tess McGill, played to perfection by Melanie Griffith) is quite literally prostituted out by  her boss (Oliver Platt) over to some cokehead in Arbitrage (Kevin Spacey), the assumption being she could maybe sleep her way into a better position. It’s gross, but not really all that surprising, and I find the double meaning of the film’s title to be an intriguing detail, an added layer to the richness and depth of the story.

Working Girl is not just about the struggles of women in the business world, though. It’s also about the Haves versus the Have-Nots. After the unfortunate moment with the cokehead from Arbitrage and his porn limo, Tess gets a job working for Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver). It’s her first time working for a woman, so she thinks things will finally be different. Katharine, however, is not of the same ilk as Tess. She comes from money, has been afforded every advantage, and has never really had to work or hustle for anything. She thinks Tess is beneath her, and she takes advantage by trying to pass off Tess’s idea for a business deal as her own. Like everything else, Katharine considers it her due.

Thanks to Katharine being laid up with a broken leg in Europe, though, when Tess finds out about the subterfuge, she goes to work correcting it. She contacts the man Katharine was going to reach out to, Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford), and fakes and stumbles her way through this new world, passing herself off as Katharine’s colleague instead of her secretary. It’s crazy, and yet you can’t help rooting for her — because she’s been wronged, because she’s smarter and works harder than almost anyone else around, and because the deck has always been and will always be stacked against her.

There are close calls and shenanigans in all sorts of settings: tropical themed weddings, “lust and tequila,” changing shirts at the office, failing to check the dosage on the Valium, and Tess’s boyfriend Nick (Alec Baldwin) screwing some skinny chick while Tess is supposed to be at class and then still having the cajones to get pissed when she answers “Maybe” to his marriage proposal. It’s a rollercoaster.

Harrison Ford is at maximum charming in this film, shorting circuits for miles in every direction with his serious sexiness overload. Whether he’s making up stories about where he got his chin scar or discarding the idea that Tess might not like him or admitting that he MIGHT have peeked when he got her undressed for bed, he is the most desirable man on the planet or any other planet in this movie. Han Solo IS a scruffy-looking nerf herder next to Jack Trainer. He’s sharp, witty, quick on his feet, and never once patronizing or condescending to Tess the way literally almost every other person she’s met up to that point has been. “The Earth moved. The angels wept. The Polaroids are … are … uh … are in my other coat.” More’s the pity.

This particular tale also benefits tremendously from the presence of Tess’s best friend Cynthia (Joan Cusack), who is loving and supportive but who also doesn’t want to see her friend get hurt by all this social-climbing and who frequently tells it like it is. “Sometimes I sing and dance around the house in my underwear. Doesn’t make me Madonna. Never will.”

Some people might dub Working Girl a Cinderella story, but it’s not. Tess works and strives for every single thing she has. She knows her stuff, she’s aware of the stakes, and she plays their game. And she wins. “You can bend the rules plenty once you get to the top, but not while you’re trying to get there. And if you’re someone like me, you can’t get there without bending the rules.” It’s a gamble, but it pays off in spades. She gets the better of Katharine’s “bony ass,” she gets the guy who is WAY BETTER BY LIKE A MILLION TIMES than the disconcertingly hairy guy she was with before, and she even gets a much better position than she thought when Oren Trask (Philip Bosco) offers her a job at his office. And she never once had to prostitute herself.

It kind of makes you want to sing a soaring Carly Simon song, doesn’t it?

MY MOVIE SHELF: Shining Through

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 191  Days to go: 134

Movie #247:  Shining Through

I’ve never really hated Melanie Griffith the way some people do. Maybe it’s because my introduction to her was Working Girl, inarguably the greatest thing she’s ever done. Maybe it’s because I’m not somehow offended or insulted by a woman with a breathy voice, nor do I assume it makes her dim or vilify her for playing “airhead” roles (not that I think she does this, on average, any more than other actresses — there’s an outcry about the dearth of quality roles for a reason). I don’t know. All I know is that I like her fine. I love Working Girl. I love Shining Through. And I really like Now and Then. I don’t even mind her remake of Born Yesterday (I actually think of her constitutional amendment scene any time the subject comes up), and just last night I happened across her hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold flick Milk Money on some channel or another and stopped to watch the rest of it. On purpose. So she’s not the most transformative actor. Neither are lots of people who still make popular movies. We all get by.

Shining Through is about a woman named Linda Voss (Griffith) being interviewed by the BBC for a documentary on women who played a part in WWII. She’s in awkward aging makeup (awkward because that’s always awkward, no matter how well it’s done) and she clumsily (on purpose, because the character is unfamiliar with the process) begins her tale. It’s possible that the main reason I’m so drawn to this film is that I saw in Linda Voss a kindred spirit. She loved the movies, you see, and she became fascinated with the war through them. As a half-Irish, half-Jewish girl from Queens, with grandparents who immigrated directly from Berlin and family still living there, Linda had a personal interest in the war with Germany as well, but until she met Ed Leland (Michael Douglas), she had no entry into the war effort itself.

What follows is a story of romance, intrigue and betrayal, set entirely in Linda’s flashback. She discovers Ed’s connection with military operations by using her knowledge of war movies to deduce his dealings, and she finds herself eventually placed in Berlin as a temporary operative under the supervision of Ed’s contact, code name Sunflower (John Gielgud). She chronicles her harrowing time there, from her disastrous attempt at her initial mission to her devastating relationship with dear friend Margrete (Joely Richardson), to the fortuitous and treacherous situation she finds herself in with high-ranking officer Franze-Otto Dietrich (Liam Neeson) — a dynamic that is fascinating not just for the precarious position she is in amid all her incongruous deceptions, but in the way Dietrich increasingly acts toward her, never dismissing her as an inferior (as Ed had done in the past, referring to her as “only a secretary”) and even taking her as his date to an opera (which Ed, once, simply brushed her inquiries about with “It’s not for everyone”). If he wasn’t an enemy combatant who wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if ever he knew her true identity, Franze might have been a better match for Linda than Ed had ever been in the past. And yet he never has a chance at her heart.

There are wonderful things here, too, about Linda’s character. She’s hot-headed and rash at times, calm and calculated at others. She believes in things passionately. She’s her own person. She does incredibly dumb things and incredibly smart things, just like any regular person thrown into the fray with a lot at stake. She’s brave and bold and horribly naive at times — traits that can both help and harm her — and she can be stubbornly, maddeningly single-minded. But she’s not just some woman who falls in love with a fascinating man and waits for him to come back to her. When she gets the chance, she goes out and makes something of her life, driven by her own deepest desires, and is willing to accept and attempt to conquer the hardships that come with it.

Shining Through is a movie my mother and I both love together, which also, no doubt, endears it to me. It’s not a great movie, by any critical standards, but it’s left an impression on me that’s lasted all these years. I always, for example, hide things in my gloves since seeing this film. And considering I learned that from this movie and Linda learned it from one of hers (“Did you ever see a movie called Victory at Dawn?”), it feels like synergy: Two opinionated girls living decades apart (okay, one’s fictional, whatever), learning everything they know about life from the cinema.  Makes me think somebody out there gets me after all, and maybe they’ll hire me to be a spy or something. (I’d be a terrible spy, but I could totally be an actress or something. Call me, Hollywood!)