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I got reminded of the movie Mighty Aphrodite today.
And, like, how did we ever think Woody Allen was okay?
It's about a man, played by Woody ofc, who adopted a son and wants to meet the kid's birthmother (Mira Sorvino) to find out what she's like in case the kid wants to meet her when he's older. Sounds okay so far, right?
BUT! It turns out that she's a sex worker. She's a prostitute and she's done porn in the past. Well that's just not acceptable to poor flustered Woody. He worms his way into her life, without letting her know who he is, so that he can save her from such a terrible lifestyle. Iirc she's actually pretty happy and isn't struggling. Not that her happiness or quality of life anything to do with his motivations - he just doesn't the woman who birthed his son to be involved in sex work.
So yeah, lies to her constantly to get involved in her life. He decides that she needs to quit sex work and get herself a husband. So he sets her up with....some dude. Some dude who has obvious anger problems and a clear hatred of women. He then lies to the dude about her career and convinces her to lie as well because no respectable man wants to be involved with a prostitute.
The dude beats her up after seeing her in a porn film he was watching with his buddies. Because it's totally fine for him to consume the content, but absolutely wrong of her to create it. He then leaves her. He's not treated like a villain btw. If anything, the movie seems to think she was in the wrong.
After this, Woody finally decides that he has no business meddling in her life like this and takes off. Doesn't cop to who he is or what he did or anything, but he at least left her alone.
And then the movie ends with them running into each other like two years later. And he still lies to her. And it turns out that she married a pilot that she met because of him, had a baby, and now she's a stay at home mother. Her life is all sunshine and roses now thanks to Woody Allen deciding to be her savior. Everything he did was good actually because she's a tradwife now.
I...just...how do we let men tell on themselves this much and then hand out Oscars for it??