As soon as the chorus triumphantly shouted "Let the River Run", I knew "Working Girl" aimed high. And high is the right word as the film opens with a zoom on the Statue of Liberty's face; the panoramic view on this Great Lady hints us about the film's subtext: when women show the light. Carmy Simon's song will win an Oscar and its uplifting tune is undeniable and integral to the success story.
The titular "Working Girl" is Tess McGill who looks like your typical sexy girl who can only dream of being secretary or assistant to some big shot in a big company, but there's more in her, she's not a Harvard alumnus but she took classes and reads a lot. She works hard and is able to provide sound advice whose credibility is spoiled by her little-girl voice and eyes that seem to ask for permission to exist in a man's world. Speaking of men, they treat her like dirt, for lack of another word, feeling she's got more chances to work her way by sleeping with a sleazy coked-up manager played by Kevin Spacey. If she's hungry, she should accept.
Let's get back to the film's opening now, the Statue of Liberty is a woman who stands and stands tall, defying the same verticality than the anonymous and numerous phallic skyscrapers and she's the most emblematic figure of New York. Following the metaphor, Tess is a woman who wants to move vertically, climbing up the professional ladder but through her merit. So when she's asked to sleep with "Bob from Arbitrage", it's again her perception of success. They call it horizontal promotion and she won't have it.
Melanie Griffith has an effective way to play the innocent girl yearning for respect her vulnerability can't earn, she's not a cynical person but she's got her pride and is tired of being looked down as someone who must either sleep or stand wearing skimpy lingerie. Her boyfriend, played by Alec Baldwyn, offers her stockings for her birthday, which says a lot about his own vision of ladies. Dame Statue of Liberty doesn't show anything, and she's the one who's guiding people.
This conflict between horizontality and verticality can even be expressed fashion-wise: men wear typical suits, women having those vertiginous 80s hairdos, Joan Cusack who plays Tess' friend Cyn couldn't have been any more New Yorker on that 'level', and when Tess gets back to the office, she trades her sneakers for high heels, anything that can artificially make women higher than men is welcome. But some women don't need any artifices, or do they?
When her new boss, Katharine Parker comes into the picture, the woman exudes alpha confidence in every gesture, every detail of her notability, she's warm, amiable and authoritarian, always attentive in keeping things smooth and punchy. Parker is the woman Tess wants to become, she adopts her speech patterns, she cuts her hair and cut off the fancy jewelry, but the catch is that she becomes her servant and ironically, Parker become as condescending and insulting as a man would be, a fine touch in a script that could have been labeled as anti-male.
So Tess doesn't turn out to be the lady who shows the light but the one who carries the torch, the casting of Weaver is crucial because she does a great job at hiding her feelings, she's much taller than Griffith and she wonderfully echoes the situation of women caught between two worlds. She's feminine and seductive with the guys, especially Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford) but then harbors her status as a weapon to destroy the spirit of an ambitious woman. Her ambivalence allows us to appreciate the hypocrisy of some women who pretend to be pro-feminism, and yet are only product or accomplices to the system that only select a few to keep the majority under their feet.
This is when the film gets a bit problematic and I won't get into the romantic undertones that could have been kept away from the script. Being a film from the 80s, directed by a man, Mike Nichols, and with Harrison Ford as the top-billed actor, we're allowed to wonder how sensitive to the pleas of women it is.
First of all, I was pleased but also puzzled by the many scenes featuring Griffith in sexy underwear, it made sense where she sneaks into Katherine's wardrobe, but the moment where she vacuums her place might be a tad gratuitous, as if the male gaze found a tunnel through the director's camera, to betray the script. That said, there's a moment where Harrison Ford who plays the smooth office worker, have two long cocktail drinks and women are gazing at him with "yummy" looks, the size of the glasses leave no doubt over the symbols and overall, it was an interesting twist on the usual gender-roles tropes (no pun intended).
The second problem was in the comeuppance Katherine would get, as deserved as it was, I was perplexed by the vulgar way she was treated. The 'bony' line wouldn't have been kept today, but maybe it was her way to 'perish' by the very weapons she used, when a woman gets at the top like a guy, why should her womanhood be an excuse to hinge on. I'm not sure about the way Parker was vilified at the end but maybe her contrast with Tess was crucial to comprehend that the best way to climb your way to success is to do so without compromising your femininity but more importantly, your integrity.
Indeed, and that's why, more than a chick (or chic) flick, it's such a culturally significant film marking with "Wall Street" the end of the yuppie years, there's no dress code to be a successful man or woman, and keeping on the Statue of Liberty metaphor, what's the purpose of standing tall if you have no light to show?
The titular "Working Girl" is Tess McGill who looks like your typical sexy girl who can only dream of being secretary or assistant to some big shot in a big company, but there's more in her, she's not a Harvard alumnus but she took classes and reads a lot. She works hard and is able to provide sound advice whose credibility is spoiled by her little-girl voice and eyes that seem to ask for permission to exist in a man's world. Speaking of men, they treat her like dirt, for lack of another word, feeling she's got more chances to work her way by sleeping with a sleazy coked-up manager played by Kevin Spacey. If she's hungry, she should accept.
Let's get back to the film's opening now, the Statue of Liberty is a woman who stands and stands tall, defying the same verticality than the anonymous and numerous phallic skyscrapers and she's the most emblematic figure of New York. Following the metaphor, Tess is a woman who wants to move vertically, climbing up the professional ladder but through her merit. So when she's asked to sleep with "Bob from Arbitrage", it's again her perception of success. They call it horizontal promotion and she won't have it.
Melanie Griffith has an effective way to play the innocent girl yearning for respect her vulnerability can't earn, she's not a cynical person but she's got her pride and is tired of being looked down as someone who must either sleep or stand wearing skimpy lingerie. Her boyfriend, played by Alec Baldwyn, offers her stockings for her birthday, which says a lot about his own vision of ladies. Dame Statue of Liberty doesn't show anything, and she's the one who's guiding people.
This conflict between horizontality and verticality can even be expressed fashion-wise: men wear typical suits, women having those vertiginous 80s hairdos, Joan Cusack who plays Tess' friend Cyn couldn't have been any more New Yorker on that 'level', and when Tess gets back to the office, she trades her sneakers for high heels, anything that can artificially make women higher than men is welcome. But some women don't need any artifices, or do they?
When her new boss, Katharine Parker comes into the picture, the woman exudes alpha confidence in every gesture, every detail of her notability, she's warm, amiable and authoritarian, always attentive in keeping things smooth and punchy. Parker is the woman Tess wants to become, she adopts her speech patterns, she cuts her hair and cut off the fancy jewelry, but the catch is that she becomes her servant and ironically, Parker become as condescending and insulting as a man would be, a fine touch in a script that could have been labeled as anti-male.
So Tess doesn't turn out to be the lady who shows the light but the one who carries the torch, the casting of Weaver is crucial because she does a great job at hiding her feelings, she's much taller than Griffith and she wonderfully echoes the situation of women caught between two worlds. She's feminine and seductive with the guys, especially Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford) but then harbors her status as a weapon to destroy the spirit of an ambitious woman. Her ambivalence allows us to appreciate the hypocrisy of some women who pretend to be pro-feminism, and yet are only product or accomplices to the system that only select a few to keep the majority under their feet.
This is when the film gets a bit problematic and I won't get into the romantic undertones that could have been kept away from the script. Being a film from the 80s, directed by a man, Mike Nichols, and with Harrison Ford as the top-billed actor, we're allowed to wonder how sensitive to the pleas of women it is.
First of all, I was pleased but also puzzled by the many scenes featuring Griffith in sexy underwear, it made sense where she sneaks into Katherine's wardrobe, but the moment where she vacuums her place might be a tad gratuitous, as if the male gaze found a tunnel through the director's camera, to betray the script. That said, there's a moment where Harrison Ford who plays the smooth office worker, have two long cocktail drinks and women are gazing at him with "yummy" looks, the size of the glasses leave no doubt over the symbols and overall, it was an interesting twist on the usual gender-roles tropes (no pun intended).
The second problem was in the comeuppance Katherine would get, as deserved as it was, I was perplexed by the vulgar way she was treated. The 'bony' line wouldn't have been kept today, but maybe it was her way to 'perish' by the very weapons she used, when a woman gets at the top like a guy, why should her womanhood be an excuse to hinge on. I'm not sure about the way Parker was vilified at the end but maybe her contrast with Tess was crucial to comprehend that the best way to climb your way to success is to do so without compromising your femininity but more importantly, your integrity.
Indeed, and that's why, more than a chick (or chic) flick, it's such a culturally significant film marking with "Wall Street" the end of the yuppie years, there's no dress code to be a successful man or woman, and keeping on the Statue of Liberty metaphor, what's the purpose of standing tall if you have no light to show?