Summary
This section of the film opens with a from-above shot of a fancy table setting. We hear Barnard giving Vivian a run-down of the various forks, knives and plates that will be used at the dinner that evening. She lays the dinner napkin in her lap and Barnard tells her to take her elbows off the table and not to slouch. Vivian tells him that she knows which one is the salad fork, but not much else, and he assures her that if she gets nervous, to “count the tines.” The camera zooms outward as Barnard tells her about the tines—or the prongs—of the different forks. Abruptly, the shot shifts to show Edward’s limo pulling up in front of the hotel. Edward comes into the lobby and is concerned that Vivian is not there to meet him. Barnard approaches him, introducing himself and telling Edward that he has a message. Edward picks up the phone to call the room, and Barnard tells him that he has a message from his niece. Confused, Edward asks him to explain, and Barnard hints that he is referring to Vivian. “I think we both know that she is not my niece, and the reason I know that is because I am an only child,” Edward says, and asks for the message. Barnard informs Edward that Vivian is waiting for him in the lounge. “Intriguing young lady,” says Barnard, which gives Edward pause before he walks towards the lounge. Barnard takes out his card to give to Edward, but Edward is already gone.
In the lounge, a piano gently plays as Edward walks up to the bar looking for Vivian. He thinks she isn’t there, but as he turns we see Vivian turn around at the bar, elegantly attired and smiling. Edward turns over his shoulder to see her, his mouth curling into a smile as she stands and walks towards him. When she tells him he’s late, he responds “You’re stunning,” and escorts her out of the bar. The scene shifts to The Voltaire, shot from above, with white table cloths and expensive light fixtures. As the host leads the couple to the table, Edward urges Vivian to stop fidgeting. At the table, Edward introduces himself to Morse, and his grandson, David. Nervously, Vivian shakes both of their hands and the group takes their seats. Abruptly, Vivian stands, which prompts all of the men to stand with her as a show of manners. When Edward asks where she is going, she says, “The ladies room,” through a stretched smile. He directs her upstairs and tells her he will order for her, as she rushes off awkwardly. The men sit.
The scene shifts to reveal a plate being set down, and the camera zooms out to reveal Vivian, back at the table, interrupting the business conversation to ask where the salad is. When Edward assures her that the salad comes at the end of the meal, she worriedly tells him, “But that’s the fork I knew.” While David attempts to steer the conversation back to business, his grandfather shares a humorous moment with Vivian, admitting that he too has never been able to keep the right forks straight in his head. Morse then picks up the toast and takes a bite, and Vivian follows suit, but first scrapes off the topping with her finger. Edward smiles at the sight. Next, escargot arrives, which worries Vivian even more. She asks the waiter who ordered it, and Edward tells her that it’s escargot, snails. As the conversation gets slightly more tense in relation to the business, Vivian struggles to master the escargot and its accompanying instrument. As Morse assures Edward, “I’m rich enough, I just want to have my shipyard,” Vivian accidentally flings one of the snails high into the air, where it is caught by an unassuming waiter. She smiles, “Slippery little suckers,” and the waiter insists, “It happens all the time.”
Now dessert arrives, as Morse tells Edward that he recently met his father, Carter Lewis. “He’s not quite the bastard everyone says he is,” says Morse, and Edward counters, “No I have the franchise on that.” The conversation is tense and Edward tells him that his father has passed away. Morse says he hadn’t realized and expresses his condolences, which Vivian echoes. Attempting to get to the bottom of the business at hand, Edward asks Morse what he wants him to do, to which Morse responds, “Leave my company alone!” Edward tells him that he cannot, as he owns ten million shares, as Vivian sits by awkwardly. Morse says that they will buy those shares back with money that they get from building the naval destroyers, but Edward insists that they won’t be able to sell those, given his company’s relationship with the Senate Appropriations Committee. The conversation grows even more tense, and David excuses himself to “get some air,” followed by Morse. Before leaving, Morse says to Edward, “Watch out Lewis. I’m gonna tear you apart."
Back at the hotel, we see Vivian’s feet in closeup as she puts on more comfortable shoes. Edward sits on the terrace outside the penthouse, and Vivian is surprised to see him sitting on the balcony. She asks him why he is being so quiet, and tells him that she was a “maniac,” but that “the business was good.” As she sits on the balcony, she narrates the situation with Morse, but Edward remains somber. Vivian then says, “I think you like Mr. Morse,” and Edward asks her to get down from her seat on the railing, as it makes him nervous. Vivian teases him, leaning back and lifting her hands, and he looks away, very afraid. Seeing that it’s upsetting him, she sits back up as he tells her that it’s irrelevant whether or not he likes Morse. He says that, on principle, he doesn’t want to let himself become emotional in business. Vivian understands this, and makes a comparison with the fact that she never kisses customers because it’s “too personal.” “When I’m with a guy, I’m like a robot. I just do it,” she tells him. He looks at her silently, and she backpedals, “Except with you!” Edward simply says, “You and I are such similar creatures, Vivian. We both screw people for money.” Vivian changes the subject, expressing condolences about the death of Edward’s father. When she asks Edward if he misses his father, Edward tells her that he hadn’t spoken to him in 14 and a half years, and that he wasn’t there when he died. Vivian asks him if he wants to talk about it more, but he resists, as she comes over beside him and crouches, saying that they should “watch old movies all night” and “veg out in front of the TV.” He stands and touches her chin, telling her that he’ll be back and that they can do that tomorrow. Vivian is confused, and asks him where he is going. Edward tells her he is going downstairs for awhile, and she watches him, disconcerted.
The scene shifts to a close-up of the television: on it, Audrey Hepburn is accepting Cary Grant’s proposal in the film, Charade. Vivian turns the television off from couch and we see that it is almost 3 AM. Vivian picks up the phone and calls down to the front desk. In the following shot, we see Vivian emerging from the elevator in a white hotel terrycloth robe, helped by the elevator attendant. He escorts her to the ballroom. In the ballroom, Edward is playing the piano as confused hotel workers are attempting to clean up for the night. No one is around. Vivian walks up behind him at the piano and crosses her arms, watching him play. When he finishes, the hotel workers clap and Vivian walks up to him. He tells her he only plays the piano for strangers. Leaning on the piano, Vivian tells him that she was getting lonely, and they share charged eye contact. Edward asks the hotel employees to leave the ballroom, which prompts Vivian to ask, “People always do what you tell them to do?” He grabs her by the waist and pulls her towards him, leaning his head on her stomach. Edward opens her robe to find her in a black negligee. As he holds her, Vivian says, “I guess so,” and Edward picks her up and puts her on the piano, her feet hitting some discordant keys. Pulling her towards him, they circle each other with their lips, hesitant to kiss. She leans back onto the piano, and he touches her, lifting up her negligee and kissing her stomach as the camera zooms out.
In the following scene, we see Vivian lying in bed the following morning, scratching her face as the curtain slides open. “Wake up, time to shop,” Edward says to her, and hands her a credit card. Vivian is not excited about the prospect of more shopping, and when Edward asks why she didn’t buy more clothes than the dress the previous day, she tells him it wasn’t as fun as she expected, because the salesgirls were mean to her. “Mean to you?” Edward says. The scene abruptly shifts to Edward holding Vivian’s hand as he walks her across the street. Edward tells Vivian, “Stores are never nice to people. They’re nice to credit cards.” Before they go into the store, he tells Vivian to stop fidgeting and spit out her gum, which she spits onto the sidewalk.
After they go into the store, Edward introduces himself to the manager, Hollister, who seems to know who he is. Edward directs the manager’s attention to Vivian, and asks if he has “anything in this shop as beautiful as she is.” The manager says that they do, before awkwardly tripping over his own words, and Edward tells him, conspiratorially, that they are going to be spending “an obscene amount of money” at the store and will need a lot of assistance. Vivian is visibly delighted behind him. The scene shifts to the manager showing Vivian a catalogue of outfits, and calling over a number of dutiful salesgirls who rush to Vivian’s assistance. The manager asks Edward how much money he is looking to spend at the store, asking if the amount will be “profane” or “really offensive.” When Edward tells him that he wants to spend a “really offensive” amount of money, the manager is delighted. Edward watches from afar as the girls try a number of different hats on Vivian, who smiles at the positive attention. Later, the manager approaches Edward and asks him if he needs more help, to which Edward responds that he is going to need much more sucking up from him as a salesperson. The manager tells him that he is handsome and powerful, and sucks up to Edward, but Edward interrupts him to tell that he should suck up to Vivian, not him.
The shot shifts to Phil on the phone, who tells Edward that Morse plans to raise Edward’s offer. Edward, on a phone at the department store, tells Phil to find out where Morse is getting his money from and tells him that he will be back in the office in an hour. Edward says goodbye to Vivian, telling her that she looks great and telling Hollister that she has his credit card. In the following montage, Vivian tries on various outfits while Roy Orbison’s song “Pretty Woman” plays. We see a delighted Vivian try on dozens of outfits. As she tries on shoes, she tells one of the salesmen that she loves his tie, and that Edward would love it too. Hollister orders the salesman to hand over the tie to Vivian, just as a pizza that she ordered is delivered to her in her chair.
The scene shifts to Vivian walking down the street in a very expensive outfit, holding several bags. As she walks down the street she recognizes the boutique from the day before. Walking in, she approaches the salesgirl who was rude to her the previous day, and reminds the girl who she is. “You work on commission, right? Big mistake! I have to go shopping now,” she says, rushing out the front door once again. The salesgirl watches her go, confused. Vivian arrives back at the hotel, a bellboy carrying her various purchases, as “Pretty Woman” continues to play. When she walks by Barnard, he watches her, smiling at her transformation. Back in her hotel room, she tips the bellboy and sits down at the desk as the song ends.
The exterior of an imposing office building. Edward sits down at a boardroom table, as Phil tells him that Morse “mortgaged everything he owns right down to his underwear to secure a loan from the bank.” Phil then tells him that Edward’s business means more to the bank than Morse’s business does, so all he has to do is call the bank to prevent it. Edward begins stacking upturned water glasses in front of him on the table and wistfully says, “Yeah,” clearly distracted. Phil stands, exasperated, and asks Edward what is wrong with him. All Edward can say is, “You know what I used love when I was a kid, Phil? Blocks,” motioning to the stack of glasses on the table. Phil doesn’t quite see Edward’s point, so Edward elaborates: as a business, they don’t make or build anything, they just move money around. Phil urges him that they have been working on the deal for a year and need to finish it.
In the hotel room, Vivian turns up seductive romantic music on the stereo and sits nude at a set table with candles and wine, waiting for Edward. When she hears the door open, she puts her high-heeled feet up on the table and throws the tie that she got for him over her shoulder. As Edward enters, she says, “How was your day dear?” He stops in his tracks and compliments her on her tie, and she tells him, “I got it for you.” As the scene shifts to a closeup shot of hands holding a cloth under a faucet, we hear Edward confiding in Vivian that his mother was a music teacher who married his much wealthier father. Still in close-up, the frame shows Vivian’s hands massaging Edward’s naked torso with a hot washcloth, before shifting to reveal the couple in the bath, Vivian holding Edward from behind, as Edward tells her that his father divorced his mother to be with another woman and “took his money with him.” After they divorced, Edward tells her, his mother died, and since then Edward was very angry with his father. He jokes that it cost him $10,000 in therapy to admit that he was angry with his father, and Vivian says, “I would’ve been angrier at the $10,000." He then tells Vivian that his father was the president of the third company he ever bought, and then sold piece by piece. When Vivian suggests that getting even with his father must have made him happy, Edward is silent. Vivian then makes an analogy between the value of the therapy that Edward had to undergo and her weekly price as a live-in prostitute, which seem to be having a therapeutic effect, but only costs $3,000.
The sounding of a horn transitions us into the next scene, and we see the pounding of horse’s hooves on grass. A game of polo is taking place, and we see Phil and his wife emerging from a parking lot, bickering. Phil asks a man if he has seen Phil anywhere. At their car, Vivian looks worried that someone at the polo match will recognize her, which Edward assures her is unlikely. He comforts her and holds her, “You look great, you look like a lady. You’re gonna have a wonderful time.” She looks at him quizzically, as he once again tells her not to fidget. Elsewhere, Edward introduces Vivian to the Olsen sisters, whom, he tells her, “have made marrying well an art form.” When Edward leaves to talk to someone else, one of the sisters refers to Vivian as “the flavor of the month,” and when this seems to upset Vivian the other sister comforts her by telling her that Edward is their “most eligible bachelor” and that “everyone is trying to land him.” Vivian fires back, “Well I’m not trying to land him, I’m just using him for sex,” and walks away abruptly.
Vivian comes up beside Edward watching the match and cheers in a hammy way—“Woof! Woof! Woof!”—causing the people in front of them to turn around. “Tell me again why we’re here,” she asks Edward, and he responds, “Business.” Phil calls Edward over and Vivian meets Phil and his wife. His wife says, “It’s always a pleasure meeting one of Edward’s girls,” before rushing off to greet someone else at the match. Phil hands Vivian a drink and rushes off to go to the bar, telling Edward that Senator Adams is there. Edward responds that he invited Senator Adams, which delights Phil. After Phil leaves, Vivian comments on Phil’s disingenuousness and says of his wife, “You could freeze ice on his wife’s ass.” She then asks if these people are his friends, and when he says that they are, she responds, “Well no wonder you came looking for me.”
Over the loudspeaker, one of the Olsen sisters invites the attendees out onto the grass to stomp divots—holes made by the horses’ hooves. Phil sneezes, as everyone goes onto the grass to stomp divots. Nearby, Phil’s wife asks Edward where he found Vivian. Edward makes a joke, then joins Vivian on the field, taking her in his arms and making her laugh. Phil looks on suspiciously at the happy couple.
Analysis
In this section of the film, we see Vivian begin to integrate herself into the world of wealth that Edward inhabits, and wear her own upward mobility—or at least the performance of upward mobility—like a natural. The plot follows the rags-to-riches structure of fairy tales like Cinderella and plays like George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Vivian has fairy godparents along the way—Barnard, Bridget, Hollister. First, Vivian enlists Barnard to help her learn proper meal etiquette. While objects of wealth have previously been alienating and foreign to Vivian, as in the boutique with the snobby salesgirl, we now see her begin to understand the rules of high society with greater skill. She attempts to fit in in the settings that have until now made her feel uncomfortable, as Barnard helps her purchase a dress and teaches her the ins and outs of fancy utensils. Later, at the department store, she is aided by a group of doting salespeople, and constructs an entirely new wardrobe, one which renders her almost unrecognizably classy. In the world of the wealthy, appearance and etiquette are one’s calling cards; not only does Vivian learn how to dress, she learns how to tip. In this section of the film, Vivian begins to “walk the walk,”—you look great, you look like a lady,” Edward assures her at the polo match—and thus the film depicts the allure of wealth, the power that it brings its possessors.
The camera angles begin to become more playful as the film enters the fairy tale portion of the story. When Barnard shows her the countless forks that might be used at dinner, the camera pans upward, zooming out to reveal the large and lavish ballroom in which Barnard is giving Vivian her lesson. As he names all the different kinds of forks, the camera reveals the large scale of the room, mirroring the countless pieces of etiquette that Vivian will have to remember. Being rich is complicated, the zoom-out seems to suggest. Wealth makes rooms larger and forks more numerous. As Vivian’s world and perspective broadens, so too does the depiction of the fancy room in which she sits. Additionally, when Vivian is served the unidentifiable entrees at dinner, the camera zooms out from the dish itself to the panicked look on Vivian’s face. While Vivian is making an effort to blend in, objects of wealth continue to confound her.
As Vivian embarks on her transformation, Edward is more and more surprised by his own interest in her. What started as simple curiosity starts to become genuinely romantic, as Vivian learns to affect the postures of a wealthier woman. When he first sees her at the bar at the hotel, he is surprised by her transformation, and the camera zooms in on his half-smiling face as he looks at her. In a new dress, with her hair done, and expensive jewelry, she is not only breathtakingly beautiful, but also viable as his date for a fancy business dinner. Just the physical transformation alone is enough to give Edward pause. Her chameleonic ability to look like a wealthier woman only adds to what allured him initially: Vivian continues to surprise at every turn, exceeding almost every expectation, one of the only people in Edward’s life who can surprise him. Her transformation causes Edward to transform as well, as he expresses ambivalence about the hollowness of his business career, and confides in Vivian about his own upbringing and relation to money.
It is also in this portion of the film that we see Edward surprise Vivian, when he seduces her atop the hotel piano. When she finds Edward playing the piano at 3 AM, Vivian is surprised and charmed by the revelation of his sensitive side. Having opened up emotionally in front of her, Edward then begins to seduce her on top of the piano. She refuses to kiss him, showing that she is still thinking of herself as a sex worker, but the scene is intimate and intense. Later, the couple takes a bath and discuss Edward's personal history, including his family baggage like his poor relationship with his father. Only with Vivian can Edward discuss the more emotionally vulnerable aspects of his life, and the couple becomes closer through this interaction.
Even as their relationship intensifies and appears to become more intimate, neither Edward nor Vivian reveal too much about how they feel about each other, and they keep their relationship businesslike. When Edward makes a show of his affection for Vivian, it is by taking her shopping, and telling the manager that they are going to spend obscene amounts of money. They both make sure to limit how personal it gets, and stick to what they both know—business. When Edward confides that it cost him $10,000 in therapy to admit that he was angry with his father—equating his therapeutic practice with its price—Vivian responds, “I would’ve been angry at the $10,000," which makes him laugh. Both Edward and Vivian see the world through the lens of value. Their attention to value is what makes them a good match, but it will take more than just business savvy to make a true love connection.
