W hat would Pretty Woman look like if it bore the smallest resemblance to the reality of sex work? The hangover outlasts the party by many days.
Ani, who is from an Uzbek background and whose grandmother spoke Russian, volunteers. Vanya is with his retinue of Russian-speaking locals and there is an instant spark with tough, smart, unsentimental Ani. Vanya invites her round repeatedly to his staggeringly luxurious crib, and pays her a five-figure sum to be his exclusive girlfriend for a trip with his sycophantic squad to Vegas where, delirious with infatuation with the gorgeous Ani, he proposes marriage.
Ani allows herself to believe this is real and the wedding certificate is legal enough. Among the tough guys is Igor Yuriy Borisov , who is as violent as any of them but with a weird streak of sensitivity and almost gallantry towards Ani. The awful story of Ani and Vanya has the horrible fascination of a slo-mo car crash, but the kind of car crash where people call the police but not an ambulance.
But the point is that Vanya is no more arrogant and dumb than any of the other men in her life; the difference is that he is young, handsome, very rich, wants to marry her and, most crucially of all, actually does marry her. Ani weighs up the odds and chooses to believe it and at no stage is she hardhearted or cynical; Baker and Madison show us that Ani is not heading for a fall in any moralistic sense. Like Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she believes that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty.
At some level, she naturally knows that his parents may not like the idea, but the fait accompli of a Las Vegas marriage certificate is unarguable, and she believes she just has to hang on and they will come around. What follows is hideous disloyalty from cringing Vanya, and an extended perhaps too extended black-comic yet weirdly believable farce of violence and hysteria. There is a terrible sadness in the ultimate scene where proud Ani shows that she cannot accept demeaning gifts from anyone without paying, with a private dance, in a car if necessary.
