So, it's about five o'clock in the morning and I'm about to put a tape in the VCR to watch some Asian action movie, but decide to channel-flip for a few minutes first. I come across the beginning of Worth Winning, an obvious cheesy '80s half-heartedly tongue-in-cheek "bad boy" romance, seemingly targeted for daytime soap audiences. I usually never watch stuff like that. All the horrible light-blue and pink sweaters the characters wear instantly give me a bad taste in my mouth, but in this case I keep watching because Madeleine Stowe catches my eye. Young, cute and sophisticated, and many leagues above this material, she is delightful to watch. So I watch the whole movie.
Apart from its bad taste in clothes and generally preposterous premise, shallow characters and completely unrealistic situations, it's not that bad. It has a classic structure, actually. As seen in many other stories, we have a guy going through three stages, or in this case, three women. The middle-aged rich aristocrat (loosely representing monarchy), the virginal romantic maiden (loosely representing the romantic ideals and rituals aspired to in the conservative bourgeois lifestyle) and the intellectual artist (loosely representing the realization of the full human potential for independent thinking and self-expression). These three, on the symbol level, represent three different social orders: old and obsolete royalist aristocracy, current republican bourgeoisie and a future liberal utopia. As it ends with the attaining of the latter, the story actually does have some redeeming artistic and social value, in that it - in a very subtle and non-literal way, of course - urges the audience to embrace a new, better and freer social order. This storytelling structure is actually very literate, and I'm not surprised the storyline came from a novel.
Now, if only the movie wasn't thoroughly suffused by that insufferable Barbara Cartland air, it might garner a higher rating than a 6 out of 10.
Apart from its bad taste in clothes and generally preposterous premise, shallow characters and completely unrealistic situations, it's not that bad. It has a classic structure, actually. As seen in many other stories, we have a guy going through three stages, or in this case, three women. The middle-aged rich aristocrat (loosely representing monarchy), the virginal romantic maiden (loosely representing the romantic ideals and rituals aspired to in the conservative bourgeois lifestyle) and the intellectual artist (loosely representing the realization of the full human potential for independent thinking and self-expression). These three, on the symbol level, represent three different social orders: old and obsolete royalist aristocracy, current republican bourgeoisie and a future liberal utopia. As it ends with the attaining of the latter, the story actually does have some redeeming artistic and social value, in that it - in a very subtle and non-literal way, of course - urges the audience to embrace a new, better and freer social order. This storytelling structure is actually very literate, and I'm not surprised the storyline came from a novel.
Now, if only the movie wasn't thoroughly suffused by that insufferable Barbara Cartland air, it might garner a higher rating than a 6 out of 10.