Tuesday Night is Film Night is trying to get back into a rhythm after missing a couple of weeks in October due to other commitments and before we start the countdown to Christmas, there's just time to slip in a quick;
Indecent Proposal
Yes, we go way back to 1993 for this ostensibly three handed interplay between Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson and Robert Redford.
The delightful Demi Moore plays Diane Murphy, who is in a solid relationship with her husband David Murphy (Harrelson). Things are looking up and David starts to live out his architectural dream; his own design for their marital home. Just as things are going well, a recession hits and they start to lose everything; money, jobs and eventually the unfinished dream house looks like it will go too. They beg some money to try to keep up repayments on the mortgage, but it's not enough. Until David hits on an idea and they race off to Las Vegas to gamble away their remaining money in attempt to win more back. At the start they do well and are thousands of dollars up, but it's not enough, they just need to double up. At this point, it starts to go wrong and they end up losing everything, not before Diane is spotted by billionaire John Gage (Redford) who is immediately attracted to her. And this is where the story starts to really unfold.
I will assume that you all know what the indecent proposal is, one million dollars for a night with your wife, but this film is more about the relationship between Diane and David and not the one million dollar night, in fact the sequence of scenes for that night is extremely brief.
The film does take awhile to get to this point and there are several overlaid scenes setting us up to this point, ensuring that sufficient background information is there.
After the indecent proposal is proposed and carried out, after some heartfelt discussion between the Murphy's I might add, we start to see the real crux of this film, where one evening of desperation leads to what could be a lifetime of dishonesty, disloyalty, mistrust and misunderstanding. We see David and Diane's relationship crumble after David loses faith in Diane's honesty and questions her motives. All the while Diane is being pursued by John Gage, who is not relentless in his quest to continue to see Diane, much to the chagrin of David. Eventually David and Diane split up and go their separate ways, but what is to become of them? What happens to Diane and John?
Obviously we have no spoilers here, you'll need to be watch the film for the complete story, let's just say I was slightly surprised by the final result, not overly displeased, but it was a bit saccharin sweet and schmaltzy, which after a tense drama was a bit of a let down.
As for the film itself, on the whole the story-line is good, believable I guess. The interplay between the characters was extremely good, especially Moore and Harrelson. Nice though it is the number of slow, semi nude scanning shots of Demi Moore was a tad predictable. Yes, she has a cute body, but continued gratuitous panning shots don't really add to the tension, but I guess it added a degree of sexual allure to the love scenes. That's not a complaint, there just seemed to be a lot of them, along with several quick jump shot edits where Moore was filmed from all angles, so was hard to see which end you were looking at. (Again, not complaining!)
As to the peripheral cast members, Oliver Platt provided some levity to the piece, playing a lawyer friend of David's, with some funny lines to lighten the mood somewhat. Also near to the end, we have what is slightly more than a cameo appearance from Billy Connolly, playing himself as a celebrity charity auctioneer, which was nice but didn't really add to the film as a whole and seemed to be a cash in on Connolly's fame at the time, I may be wrong.
All in all, Indecent Proposal was better than mediocre, the TNiFN female contingent enjoying it more than the male. So the scores are going to reflect the female vote, but it's the male contingent that writes the words!
TNiFN Rating 68%
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