You inspired me to watch this movie again, and I’m happy you did.

I watched this review the day you posted it, and I didn’t have anything to say immediately, because the first time I saw the movie, I had very, very mixed feelings towards it, and I had no idea what to say, even though I always try to comment on your reviews if I have anything remotely meaningful to babble in response to it. I had thought Holly to be annoying, at least through the first 2/3 of the movie, and I had a rather unfavorable attitude towards Audrey Hepburn’s character, given how much I love Roman Holiday and liked (with some reservations) Sabrina. I was this close (I’m holding two of my fingers very close together) to posting a big, long rantish post about how I didn’t like the movie, but didn’t know why exactly, and how I suspected it may have been about how I didn’t accept Audrey in this role, and what that says about me, and typecasting, and blahdy blah. I eventually decided to just nut up (as they say) and watch the damn thing again.

And I actually liked it this time. Third time’s the charm, as, again, they say. First time, I found Holly irritating and fake (it was a long, long time ago, this), second time, I found her pitiable, but still aggravating, especially when she loosed poor Cat in the middle of nowhere in the rain like a….bad person. This time, however, I actually liked her, despite that last bit. She was a very strong character; not the boring type that has it all figured out and thus has nowhere to go as a dramatic character, nor as a passive nothing, nor as an annoying whelp who needs another character to fix everything for her, but as someone who has made her own choices and has lived by them for better (the end) or worse (the beginning); in other words, a recognizable person. Paul helped her overcome the stickier obstacles in her jaded/doomed view on life, but, this time, finally, she seemed to be already a nearly-complete character, a real living, breathing woman running away, as always for early Audrey, from the old world she didn’t want into the new world she didn’t fit into. I’m a lil’ surprised that it took until the third view to feel like I actually understood Holly’s character (and this having read the book before even my first Audrey film), especially given how iconic this movie has been for her, and how much this icon…icity has informed my view on Audrey and her characters long before I saw one of her movies for the first time. Maybe it was my mistake for buying too much into the traditional fairy tales of her early films and not fully appreciating the more modern fairy tale of this movie.. But it all worked out, for Holly and for me as a viewer.

And given that I had already given the movie two watches and been left unsatisfied, I suspect I would have been unlikely to have given it a third try anytime soon. But you did, indirectlyish, inspire me to give it a rare third try. And it took. Finally. There’s one cinematic monkey off my back. Thank you, Jill. Now I feel like I can not only talk, but think, about this movie freely. You’ve liberated me. :p