Word: paulas
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While the Navy, in the person of Sgt. Foley drags Mayo towards his officer's stripes. Paula Pokrifki (Debra Winger) lures the man out from behind the James Dean-punk facade. Paula is a factory girl from across the bay, apparently one of a breed specializing in purposely getting knocked-up by pilots-to-be, hoping for a shot-gun wedding and an escape from their dreary existence. But Mayo's motel bedmate turns out to be different sensitive, self-aware, and genuinely in love with an Italian stud tast becoming an admirable person as well. Winger is not only...
...role in the laughable American Gigolo, Gere's Mayo has definition and direction. First, he seeks the pride the could never have achieved living above a cat house with his degenerate father. Second he learns about the price of integrity, avoiding false emotionalism in his early relationship with Paula. Third, he discovers that he can combine these with true friendship and generosity. In a subplot that could have become hokey, but somehow doesn't Mayo provides the final burst of encouragement a lone female trainee needs to prove herself physically capable of making the grade...
...coming to grips with "dropping a little napalm on a village where there might even be women and children." Later, in a rather superfluous confrontation with a bar-full of townies, the hero ignores the taunt of "warmonger" and breaks noses only when the locals actually threaten him and Paula...
Perhaps this film's only other flaw is an awkward contrast to the Mayo-Paula duo. Mayo has a buddy, Sid Worley (David Kieth), who enters the service to try fill the shoes of a brother killed in Vietnam. Sid falls for the curves of one of Paula's factory floozy colleagues--but the pairing ends in a rather melodramatic tragedy out of place in an otherwise down-to-earth film...
...Three Hermits, whose pious innocents forget a prayer and run on top of the ocean to find their condescending teacher. The most recent are powerful condensations of modern life by Heinrich Boll, who describes a professional laugher producing merriment on cue for everyone but himself, and Paula Fox, whose News from the World describes a woman and her contaminated seaside village withering for lack of love. Between these terminals, Chekhov, Kafka, Mishima, Hemingway, Borges and a score of other master miniaturists show that brevity can be not merely the soul of wit, but the whole of it, and that almost...