Loving your Stalker: What to do if you are kidnapped by Robert Redford

[dangermousie]

Watched "Three Days of the Condor" earlier. Pretty entertaining 70th thiller with a lovely sense of paranoia (a CIA bookworm researcher escapes a hit on his division and tries to hide), and young Robert Redford is gorgeous and acts super-well BUT. BUT. BUT. The Love Story! Good God!

He kidnaps Faye Dunaway to "enlist" her help by hiding at her place, at gun point. He threatens her in her apartment, he barks orders at her (though they are interspersed with rather sad attempts at normal conversation and explanations), he makes her lie to her boyfriend on the phone, and when he leaves the house for a bit, he gags her and ties her arms (and legs?). Now, I don't hate his character for it: he is flipping out, scared, and trying to save his life. Whatever.

But when he gets back from his little jaunt and takes off her gag, they end up having a little conversation (with words "SORRY" figuring prominently NOWHERE), and he mentions something about wanting to forget and lo and behold, soon they are having uber-romantic sex on her bed. Next morning she sets out to help him (he must have been extra good, I suppose).

What the Fuck? Yeah, he is Robert Redford, with that shock of bright blond hair, adorable 70s clothes, and thick researcher glasses. If you were to have sex with a complete stranger on the run, he'd be a lovely choice. But, not even RR could be able to plausibly persuade a woman he just kidnapped at a point of a gun and maltreated into loving consensual sex. I can see him as a lovely boyfriend for ANY other women in New York, EXCEPT Faye Dunaway. Me, I would be too busy being scared to death and trying to get out. So would most normal people. Either she has lost her mind to Redford pheromones, or she has bizarre kinky fantasies and it's a fulfillment of her girlish dream to have a handsome stranger tie her up and threaten bodily harm. Or maybe I am just hallucinating.

In any case, it is just too bizarre for me to take. People who have had problems with P/A because Anakin was staring at Padme a bit too intensely should really take a look at this one!

Comments

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I have problems with a LOT of "romances" in movies as presented.

HIGHLANDER - OMG, you're immortal! I just killed you and you didn't die! Even though I'm screaming and grossed out it's so HAWT that we must instantly have sex!

WHAT WOMEN WANT/YOU'VE GOT MAIL - You ruined my career! Let's have sex!

SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE/MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE - I don't know a thing about you, but I want you! Let's have sex!

NATIONAL TREASURE - You stole the one thing that's most precious to me in the whole wide world, endangering my life and career, but you're just so manly that I'm going to deface the thing I love and follow you into mortal peril. Lets have sex if we live through this!

Whatever soap had "Luke and Laura" - rape is okay if you really love her - heck, even she'll just start thinking of it as "the first time we made love" eventually.

No wonder I like Bollywood, y'know? At least the stupid is keeping them apart, not throwing them into bed.

[katranna.livejournal.com]

Admittedly in You've Got Mail, it took a good long while for them to
a) fall in love without knowing that one of them ruined the other's career
b) the second one to apologize and for them to become friends
before the sex thing.

And yeah, dear cos, I don't see why you'd have a problem with this movie when you're so into Padme/Anakin. :-P At least being tied up is sexy!

(Having a teenage boy awkwardly slobbering all over you is NOT.)

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Tied up as a consensual sex act might be, tied up by crazed guy with gun, not so much.

I'd rather have awkward slobbing than armed kidnapping ANY day. :D

You've got Mail: annoys me. Why would anyone want a guy this manipulative.

Sleepless in Seattle? She's a stalker. Ugh.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I wouldn't really call BW less dysfunctional. I'm thinking of "It's ok that you threw my sister off a roof and killed dozens of her friends to cover your tracks, for you'll I'll badmouth my father!" Baazigar or "It's ok that you slaughtered most of my country's population (and procreated with a Buddhist girl), at least I have found you again" Asoka. Or "I'll yell at you and threaten to beat you till you admit that you love me." Tere Naam. Not to mention various movies that take the "Stand by your man" thing too far.

So, I think that neither genre is free of dysfunction. Well, aside from the fact that Hollywood is trying to sell us these women as independent educated career women.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Well, in Asoka they established the strong love before. When you love someone this strongly, you are willing to deal with a lot more. I don't care if relationships are dysfunctional or not my idea of good, but they have to be believable. In Asoka I fully believe in their love. In TDotC? Nope. Makes no sense.

And of course something like Tere Naam which is pretty clear that both of these people ARE messed up.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have no problem with dysfunction relationships. In fact, I fully love some of them. In fact, the only thing that will make a romance instantly dislikable for me is if I think one of the parties involved is acting stupid.

But one considers stupid another one considers touching. Like, I have a deep seated dislike against most "I'll wait forever and stay pure for a guy" stories. Whether it's Veer Zaara or Kuch Kuch Hota Hai or Na Tum Jaano Na Hum. (of course there are different levels of how much this plot point annoys me. In Veer Zaara she had basically just met the guy. In NTJNH she only knew him from letters. I find that to be on the same level as disturbing as having a one night stand with a sexy drifter with a gun.) Especially if the man, at the same time doesn't stay as pure (like in KKHH or Asoka).

In Asoka it did annoy me that she took everything relatively easy because I thought it slighted her a character, considering the way she'd been built up so far. It made her into an "OK" average character when she could have been super-duper kick-ass.

Anyway, most of the BW dysfunction we probably don't notice because we only get the filtered version of BW. Meaning we usually only see the cream of the crop, the *really* crappy movies we usually don't even register, especially if there are no noteworthy stars involved.

I remember reading one of Marco's critiques of a movie where the hero saves the heroine from being gang raped and when gives her a lecture about how she totally had it coming because of the way she dresses. Sadly I forgot the name of the movie, but I'm sure it's somewhere in the Worst of listing. I also had people complain that Biwi No.1 ends with the wife apologising to the husband that she made him have an affair. Besides, we always have Gundaraj ;)

Personally, I've never been too fond of the X abducts Y, they have whacky adventures and fall in love genre, but is it really as seldom? Although I guess it feels more offputting if it comes in the guise of an otherwise very realistic looking thriller/crime story.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

BTW, I'm not trying to bring in Gundaraj and the like into the discussion as arguments. After all, all the other movies named in here have in common that they were quite commercially successfull.

Oh, Ishq Vishk did strike me as quite disturbing too :-)