ABSTRACT
The previous chapter explored ways in which Garry Marshall’s Pretty Woman (1990) set the terms by which the romantic heroine is reinvented in the girly film. My analysis of the film emphasized how chastity no longer functions as a defining element that signals the heroine’s virtue and exceptional status. Instead, I argue, appearance, especially “looking good in clothes,” comes not simply to represent more abstract qualities such as “virtue,” but to constitute an attribute that is perceived as desirable in itself. The “single girl” as defined by Helen Gurley Brown becomes, paradoxically, the new ideal wife. This focus on a consumer-constructed self as well as sexual availability underlines the film’s relationship to the neo-feminist paradigm, as does a focus on friendship, especially between women. This chapter will narrow the focus to the neo-feminist friendship
film, examining Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (David Mirkin, 1997) as a specific example of this sub-genre. While Pretty Woman is not a female friendship film, it incorporates some of the elements of the genre by foregrounding the relationship between Vivian and Kit. Though Kit is not able to follow Vivian into the new world that she creates for herself, their separation is not an easy one. Marshall comments on lovers’ partings, adding that “to part with a great friendship is just as hard.” He continues: “Friendship is always a part of life … and if you are lucky enough to have a friend, your life is far more better and if your friend can be your wife, your husband, well that’s even good or your lover … all good ways [sic].”1 For Vivian and Edward to come together, both must part with their best friends, Kit and “Stuckey” respectively, who perhaps with the best of intentions have led them down the wrong path (corporate speculation in Edward’s case, and prostitution in Vivian’s case)—a wrong path that is perhaps necessary to finding the right path, each other, the restoration of the heterosexual couple, but also their own moral equilibrium and family values. Marshall remarks, citing Bertolt Brecht: “First food, then morals. … Later in the picture, the morals come,” delineating, in particular, Vivian’s journey from a point at which she
moves from fearing for her survival to considering the kind of life she wishes to lead.2
