Chapter 13
Dental Floss
Sometimes the crack is tiny, but it still does the trick. In Pretty Woman, the crack for Richard Gere’s billionaire Edward is dental floss. He has hired Vivian (Julia Roberts), a hooker, for the night. He is depressed and they haven’t done anything, other than watch TV and eat a few strawberries. When he comes into the bathroom and she quickly puts her hand behind her back, he thinks she’s doing drugs and is about to throw her out. She denies that it’s drugs, but doesn’t offer to show him what she is hiding. When he grabs her wrist and she opens her hand, she holds dental floss.
This throws him. Off balance. Off his game. Out of his funk. “Very few people surprise me.” He apologizes and stands in the doorway watching her. It’s hard for him to leave the room, because right there, he fell into that tiny crack. She asks if he’s going to watch her floss. He says no, but he doesn’t go. “You’re watching.” He finally pulls himself away and goes, but if you watch closely, from here on, Edward cares for her. That small human detail hooks him. All Vivian has to do is reel in the dental floss and land the poor fish.
In Brief Encounter (1945, from a play by Noel Coward), the crack is even smaller. It is a tiny cinder in a woman’s eye in a train, station in post-war London. As Laura (Celia Johnson) waits for her train a cinder blows into her eye causing her pain and distress. She goes into the platform café and tries to get it out with water but can’t. A kind doctor, Alex (Trevor Howard), takes her face in his hands and removes the cinder for her. And falls in love with her, from this moment on.
In Pride and Prejudice again (2005 version), the crack is a muddy hem and windblown hair. Mr. Darcy (played by Matthew Macfadyen, ten bonus points if you know the character’s first name) falls for Lizzie Bennett (Keira Knightley) the moment she breaks through the veneer of his perfect drawing room world where he is being bored to death by his best friend’s petty, pretty sister. Lizzie suddenly appears, standing in his breakfast room hair wild, cheeks flushed, and boots and hem muddied from tromping across the fields, having come to see her sister who is ill. She stays in the room for only a moment, but her vivacity (physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual) is such a breath of fresh air that Darcy is blown away by her and never recovers. She eclipses all of the “accomplished young women” he has known heretofore. And it’s Fitzwilliam.
It’s not the size of the crack that matters. It is its ability to humanize. Personalize. Endear someone.