January 22 movie: Designing Woman. I love this movie. I've seen a lot of old movies about romantic couples who bully and manipulate each other into submission. In this movie Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall believably love each other. And they learn to live with each other by compromising on small things (she goes to the boxing match with him; he goes to her fashion show) and big (he moves into her apartment even though he'd feel more comfortable someplace else; she pretends to believe his ridiculous story about the woman from his past, because she trusts him that it is in the past).
I said before that Peck doesn't expect Bacall to quit her job, but I didn't notice before this viewing that he does ask her about it. It's their first afternoon at her place, and he asks her, "So you like this apartment, and you like your job." She offers to leave the apartment and live wherever he wants, but she doesn't offer up the job. On the contrary, she repeats several times how much she loves her job. They argue about a lot of things (this is a romantic comedy after all) but her career is never an issue again. I really like that.
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