Speaking of Disney animated flicks, my all time favourite is Mulan. I love that story! It was my ironing companion for years…

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – with the yummy Sean Bean of course.

Jane Eyre – because the characters were unequal by both money and class

Wuthering Heights – another great book/movie about inequality through money and class

Indecent Proposal – a bit of a triangle in this one. Rich and older Robert Redford offers one million for a night with Woody Harrelson’s wife, Demi Moore. The money nearly destroys their marriage, but love prevails in the end.

African Queen – I just love this movie. Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart play an ill-matched pair. She a prim spinster and he’s a gin loving river-bum. It’s lovely romance disguised as a war movie.

And my all time favourite ‘Beauty and The Beast’ – the Disney version of course. The ultimate unequal love story the prince turned beast and the beautiful but feisty peasant girl.

Happy viewing

Before Sunrise
Sabrina
Ever After
No Mercy
How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
The Proposal (x5)
A Private Function
Confessions of a Shopaholic
He’s Not That Into You
The Long Hot Summer
Maid In Manhattan
Trading Places
You’ve Got Mail
Notting Hill
The Thomas Crown Affair
Journey to the Far Side of the Sun
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
The Notebook

Trish and Madeline (and Madeline’s pal), thanks so much for your lovely comments on the story.

I would have to say The Notebook. A classic chick flick, about a young high class girl, who falls in love with a strapping laboring man. Just beautiful. Definitely a film where equality is an issue to keep them apart. But love knows no bounds.

Magic in print.

Think that ironing’s gonna have to wait a wee while…

One more I’d like to mention, although it’s more of a “segment” in a film really. Has anyone seen The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus? Well, I thought the character of Tony Shepherd fitted very well with what we’ve been discussing here. There’s one particular sequence in an opera house where Tony is being given an award for his charity work, when really his dark alter-ego is a crook and a fraudster. The heroine, Valentina, ultimately redeems him though – but not before he has been chased by an angry lynch mob! I won’t spoil it anymore for anyone who hasn’t seen it.

Have you ever seen The Thomas Crown Affair with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway? The remake with Pierce Brosnan was also good, but it still doesn’t touch the original. McQueen plays a billionaire playboy who robs a bank because he’s bored. Dunaway is brought in to investigate him, but each time she ends up “falling under his spell” to borrow a cliche. Meanwhile, McQueen plays off various people against each other. In the remake it’s a picture by Monet that gets stolen.

My second nomination is a lot more obscure, and that’s a film called Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (aka Doppleganger). Here Roy Thinnes plays Colonel Glenn Ross, an astronaut and playboy. A probe has discovered a new planet on the far side of the sun, with the same orbit and size as Earth. So, a mission is planned with Colonel Ross leading it. Meanwhile, his wife Sharon is using all this publicity to get herself into the limelight (and the actress, Lynn Loring, who plays Sharon bears an uncanny resemblance to model Katy Price, aka Jordan, who is currently in the UK media spotlight). Well, unfortunately the mission goes pear shaped. The astronauts land on what they think is the new planet but find out that “everything is reversed!” That is, everything is the exact mirror image of the world they left behind. This ties in with Colonel Ross’s fall from grace (everyone thinks he’s gone mad) and the breakdown of his marriage to Sharon. I mention this fiilm because it has a lot of sixties glamour and some very good romantic chemistry between Thinnes and Loring.

Also, “You’ve Got Mail” has money issues — the big bookstore owner (Tom Hanks) vs. the independent kids’ bookstore owner (Meg Ryan)…but unknownst to them they’ve been pen-pals for years and slowly fall in love. Not my favourite romantic comedy, but fun for a watch, too.
~Amy