Beautiful Girls

Beautiful Girls

1996

Directed: Ted Demme

Writer: Scott Rosenberg

112 Minutes

Willie (Tomothy Hutton) found true love when he came back to his home town of Knights Ridge. His only problem was his true love was a thirteen-year-old, Lolita named Marty (Natalie Portman).

There we other women, including Willie’s fiancé Tracy (Annabeth Gish). There was Andrea (Uma Thurman) the most attractive, intelligent, and lovable visitor to enter this small town. And there were others before.

But none of them were Marty.

Marty was an “old soul,” who asks the questions for Willie. And though he is taken back by her comments, he realizes how priceless this young girl is. She will grow into a wonderful woman, a lover, and the dream long past, but never forgotten by William.

In the scene above, Willie signals Marty over after visiting friends in the ice fishing shack. After a certain back and forth about friends and adolescence boyfriends, Mary makes a comment about how Willie is her new boyfriend.

William laughs it off.

Marty marriage advice to Willie, “You should wait until you’re ready. You should wait until you meet someone that excites you.”

She is saying he should wait for her – wait five years.

Willie suggests that in five years, Mary won’t remember him. She has changes. She will grow up. And she will out-grow and forget him like Christopher Robin did with Winnie the Pooh.

That’s what happens when you grow up. You forget.

Willie would be ready and willing, if society allowed it. Marty is the girl he wished he met when he lived in Knight’s Ridge. She is funny, lovable, and accepts Willie for everything he is not.

But, he can never have her. He has to live in the present and five years is a lifetime for someone who has only lived thirteen.

They part ways, but that was their moment. It was a moment that they admit there is a flame between them, if only for a second. And now that it’s gone, Willie has to go back to figuring out his life.

That’s why Beautiful Girl is a terrific film: it’s about figuring shit out.

Willie has his old friends, a brother, and these women to help him find what life is about. They help him find the true meaning in this world and that is this:

"A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you've been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man - promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it's going to be okay."

In the end, Beautiful Girls is about finding someone special and loving her until the end.

But there was always Marty and Winnie and Pooh.