Indecent Proposal is Not so Indecent After All

I watched, rather rewatched, Indecent Proposal as insomnia kept me up last Friday. Appreciation for a movie always comes late. In our youth, we were probably, too naive, to understand all the emotions that go with falling in love. We, or at least I, saw the movie for what it says it is.....

One of the biggest teases in film history, this film's sensational plot finds a young wife (Demi Moore) solicited for sex by a wealthy bachelor (Robert Redford), for which the latter offers to pay a cool million bucks to her and her underachieving husband (Woody Harrelson). The two accept Redford's deal, and their marriage is ruined. The twist in the film, though, is that the sin doesn't lie with the rich guy, but rather with this unfocused, immature, equivocating couple who would do such a thing, naively believing it would get their lives on track. Director Adrian Lyne, who caused an even greater stir by filming Lolita (the one starring Jeremy Irons), thus pulls a kind of thinking person's bait and switch, promising something tawdry and then turning the story around so its focus is on a rite of passage for the estranged spouses. Still, Lyne has some peculiarly garish ideas at times: the final disposition of that million dollars is like a joke out of Monty Python. --Tom Keogh

I probably branded, Diana, Demi's character, a whore, for agreeing to have paid sex with billionaire John Gage (Robert Redford), the lothario who uses his money to buy anything, people included, to get what he wants. Robert Redford, though, makes for a fine playboy and who wouldn't be tempted..... What about David, Woody Harrelson's character, and Diana's husband..... the wimp who allowed his wife to consummate the deal of a lifetime in exchange for money to fund their dream......

As they say, experience is the best teacher.... Watching it now when I am no longer the girl that I used to be, I would say that Indecent Proposal is simply a love story . It is about a woman torn by being loved deeply by two man. It's about the husband who made the mistake of gently pushing the woman that he loves into a 'sin' that would change their lives in exchange for a dream......... When push comes to shove, he was willing to let go of his wife to give her the life that he thinks she deserves. It is about a rich man who has the world at his fingertips. While he didn't want to show it, it was clear he was so touched by his love for Diana that he was willing to give everything up including letting her go at the very end........... It's really a love story with three protagonists instead of just two.

The movie is about love, imperfect in its expression, but perfected by how the protagonists after succumbing to their weaknesses, bounced back at the end to reclaim true love, pinching our heart just enough to accept the consequences of an imperfect love.

You might want to give this movie another look this weekend. Just the right stuff to watch this Valentine's day ........ and you might have the answer for the question begging for an answer, "Would you do it for a million bucks?"