Taglines: He’s head over heels and headed straight for trouble!
The Woman in Red movie storyline. San Francisco ad man Teddy Pierce is amused by, then obsessed with, a beautiful woman whose red dress goes whooshing over her head from a gust of wind, blowing her skirt and showing her red satin bikini panties while she crosses a grate. Teddy is happily married to Didi, but he cannot get this woman out of his mind. Encouraged by his friends Buddy, Joe and Michael, he tries to ask her for a date but mistakenly phones Ms. Milner, a plain ad-agency employee who is flattered by his interest.
Teddy ultimately does become acquainted with the woman in red, a model named Charlotte, going horseback riding with her and even inviting her to a relative’s party. He radically alters his wardrobe and begins using elaborate ruses to see Charlotte socially. Meanwhile, he incurs the wrath of Ms. Milner, whom he stands up.
Events come to a head in Charlotte’s high-rise apartment, where she invites Teddy into her bed. He is thrilled until her airline pilot husband suddenly comes home. Trying to escape, Teddy ends up on a ledge, where passersby below believe he is about to commit suicide, all captured on live television. He jumps out the window and waits to be caught by the firemen. While falling, Teddy starts to become interested in a newswoman who smiles at him.
The Woman in Red is a 1984 American romantic comedy film directed by and starring Gene Wilder. Wilder also wrote the script, adapting it from the Yves Robert film Pardon Mon Affaire. It co-stars Charles Grodin, Gilda Radner, Joseph Bologna, Judith Ivey and Kelly Le Brock. The film won an Academy Award for Best Original Song: “I Just Called to Say I Love You”, performed by Stevie Wonder.
Film Review for The Woman in Red
There’S a curiously dated feeling to Gene Wilder’s ”Woman in Red,” or at least a sense of dislocation: after all, lighthearted American comedies about men desperate to cheat on their wives have been more or less out of vogue since ”The Seven Year Itch.”
Mr. Wilder’s film is a remake of the 1977 French comedy ”Pardon Mon Affaire,” which explains some of its Gallic casualness; its hero is meant to be charmingly guilt-free, and his wife sympathetic but dim. Fortunately, most of the film is more appealing than its premise.
”The Woman in Red,” which opens today at the Beekman and other theaters, is about Teddy Pierce, whom Mr. Wilder has described as ”just an ordinary, essentially decent guy who gets in over his head.” He has a nice but unremarkable wife named Didi (Judith Ivey), a close-knit group of male buddies and a wild crush on a beautiful model named Charlotte (Kelly Le Brock). The movie concentrates on Teddy’s efforts to evade his wife and a smitten but bad-tempered co-worker (Gilda Radner) and to chase Charlotte. But it is at its gentle, knowing best in scenes about men.
Joseph Bologna, Charles Grodin and Michael Huddleston play Teddy’s longtime cronies, aiding him in his adultery scheme while also engaging in monkey business of their own. One of them (Mr. Huddleston) is fooling around with a surgeon’s wife, whom he will visit only if her husband is performing major surgery; another (Mr. Bologna) calls his wife ”my Saint Theresa” until she finds out about his philandering and strikes back. Mr. Grodin plays Teddy’s closest confidant, who turns out to have a bigger secret than the movie can comfortably handle. But the revelation is followed by a lovely, low-key scene of rapprochement between him and Mr. Wilder.
Miss Ivey and Miss Radner both play straight women to Mr. Wilder’s amiable Teddy, and both of them play it somewhat dumb. (Miss Ivey does a fine job and has an easier time of it than does Miss Radner, whose character is alarmingly and unflatteringly severe.) Michael Zorek is funny as the worst boyfriend anyone’s teen- age daughter ever had. Mr. Wilder, who has improved greatly as a director, has also written the screenplay, and done it with an eye to everyone’s sympathetic foibles. But Teddy remains the principal focus. Although he operates in a near-perfect moral vacuum, he manages to do so with at least a superficial appeal.
Whether Teddy is taking up horseback riding to impress Charlotte or turning instant hipster with a silly new suit and hairdo, Mr. Wilder manages to make him reasonably likable. He’s even more so when he comes close to getting caught, and the film contains several scenes in which his ingenuity is put to the test. In one of these, Teddy quickly rethinks his plan to get away for the evening after Didi finds a loaded gun and accidentally shoots a hole in his underwear. In another, Teddy finally makes a date with the sultry Charlotte and arrives with her at a surprise party – given for his birthday, and attended by his entire family.
The Woman in Red (1984)
Directed by: Gene Wilder
Starring: Gene Wilder, Kelly LeBrock, Charles Grodin, Judith Ivey, Joseph Bologna, Gilda Radner, Kyle T. Heffner, Kyra Stempel, Viola Kates Stimpson
Screenplay by: Jean-Loup Dabadie, Yves Robert
Production Design by: David L. Snyder
Cinematography by: Fred Schuler
Film Editing by: Christopher Greenbury
Costume Design by: Ruth Myers
Set Decoration by: Peg Cummings
Music by: John Morris
Distributed by: Orion Pictures
Release Date: August 15, 1984
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