Indecent Proposal, based on the novel by Jack Engelhard - Seven out of 10

Indecent Proposal, based on the novel by Jack Engelhard

Seven out of 10

The critics have destroyed this motion picture, giving it an abysmal Metascore – average rating – of 35 out of 100 and there may be more than one reason to think that this film would not be produced today.

On the other hand, it is to some extent the epitome of the scandal behind the MeToo and other real emancipation movements, for the villain of the story is a (white), rich man, the paradigm of the entitled, spoiled, narcissistic, entitled individual that has attracted the Wrath of the common man, a sort of Trump.

The recipient of the Razzie Awards for Worst Picture, Worst Supporting Actor, Worst Screenplay – and nominated in Worst Actor, Actress, Director, Song – together with other ignoble prizes, as well as a handful of more serious ones, has some incredibly bad dialogue.

Demi Moore has never been a tremendous artist, if you ask this cinephile, and she is not able to shine as Diana Murphy, wife of David Murphy aka Woody Harrelson – this is one of the best actors in the world, but he had almost nothing to work with at this stage, when he has not acquired yet the charm, magnetism, irony, complexity which would characterize his later performances.

They have financial problems which seem to be abated for a while when they win gambling at the casinos in Las Vegas, where the first lucky streak is not enough to cover the debts they had accumulated.

They meet the playboy John Gage – a shadow of The Great Gatsby, another Redford role where the result was not the expected success – aka Robert Redford, the man who benefits from such a saintly image.

Alas, if you read the marvelous Adventures in the Screen Trade – a colossal, fabulous, quintessential work on Hollywood, film making, scripts and the rather shallow stars that we so admire – you get a different picture.

For quite some time, Robert Redford seemed to have been closer to the tycoon in this film than the generous, wise figure that people honor, for he acted viciously after the launch of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, when he cancelled a project he had initiated, making the work of William Goldman useless.

Redford recidivated while preparing for All the President’s Men, when it looks like he made communication with the same Goldman awkward and stupid, speaking through his assistant, making calls difficult and finally offering the wondrous writer “the worst experience in his life” when he announced that – again – his work looked futile, for after months of painful efforts, the actor- producer would choose the screenplay presented by one of the journalists of the story – Carl Bernstein.

In Indecent Proposal, Gage plays billiards with David and mentions a scenario in which one million dollars could solve his problems, if someone offers one million dollars for a night with his attractive wife, asking what his position would be and getting an answer from his wife:

He would tell you to fuck off …or something along these lines

The billionaire retorts that the husband has said nothing, insists that this is a serious proposal – if indecent – when David replies that it was all just a game and it was a possibility and not a serious thing, and the rich man invites the couple to think over this and then answer.

It is the ultimate vileness of the ultra-rich and entitled – who seem to own most of the planet, statistics seem to say that only one per cent control about seventy per cent of the assets on the planet, with even more serious imbalances in some lands – who think they can have all.

True, in there, there may be another message, that they cannot really aspire to have everything – real science, positive psychology has looked at the matter, and one of the researches took the winners of big lottery prizes as testing material and the results showed that they see a jump in their happiness levels after winning a lot of cash, but then, after a few months, they returned to their base level of wellbeing.

The film makes one – this viewer anyway – think of the Hollywood access tapes, where the present leader of America and the free world talks about all the pussy he grabs, for once you are a celebrity – or a rich, loathsome, orange idiot, who claims to be rich when asking for loans and then he becomes suddenly poor when he has to pay taxes, which he does not make public, unlike any other president – they let you do anything and he did so much that democracy is discredited now.

Diana Murphy plays the role of the sacrificial lamb – or that is for a while what the silly script tries to assert – saying that she would spend the night with the tycoon in order to offer a good life to the man she loves – her husband, the one who does not see for too long what the implications are.

The motion picture tries to be complex, in that Gage is sometimes not only the white playboy, buying women, but he has a brighter side, can even be altruistic, and does not push to have his desires fulfilled.

Alas, it just becomes outré, the complexity of the characters does not fly, it all seems bizarre and the result is a bizarre, three Razzies winner that does not make sense and instead of a drama, you sometimes wonder if you are not watching an absurd comedy with Trump as one of the pretentious fools.