Film Summary DXXXIX (Sabrina)



I'm trying to think of the best way to describe this movie. It's by no means difficult or complex. In fact you've already seen it.
It's the most default by the book love triangle film that there ever was. But it's the interactions and way the characters go about these actions that make up the interesting parts of the movie. The minut details are the reason you watch.

So Andre Hepburn plays Sabrina a servant of a very wealthy estate. She has a crush on one of the men of the family. This guy David played by William Holden.
She yearns  in for the days when he'll sing Sweet songs to her and take her out to the tennis court. Serving her nice champagne like he does so many other preppy Airhead elitist girls.

But alas such a relationship can simply not be.
Besides being a servant, the man hardly recognises her.
It's also frowned upon by both the family and the help that such a romance should spark between the two.
Despite that fact,  a lot of the ''help'' really wants the two to get together.
I think it's more of an over dramatic romance they want to see. Like watching a soap opera on reveal itself in real life.

Sabrina's father (who's also not crazy about the relationship) send her daughter off to Paris to attend some snooty cooking school.
Where we get the worst part of the movie as Marcel Hillaire plays this overly dramatic chef who pontificates on the technique of cooking which in reality is actually pretty bad.
His way of cracking an egg leaves a mess all over the place.
It's not that hard to crack an egg with only one hand. I do it all the time and I'm a most simple plebeian.

Anyways it's during this time that Sabrina becomes a far more competent woman. Finding more of her own personality.
She then later on returns to America with the idea of wooing David.

Which at this time has become something of a problem as David is engaged to this random woman that he hardly knows.
Supposedly his family wants to get in on this plastic business venture and in order to do so they need a plastics manufacturer.
They think they can get a discount on the manufacturing if one of their children marries the daughter of one of their family.
Thus creating a kind of family relationship not unlike the Barons of the old Holy Roman Empire. This causes a minor problem as David was unaware of the relationship himself.
Becoming very distraught that his livelihood should just be thrown out the window for the sake of family business.
But he also doesn't seem to fight it too much. He gets a little bit involved with Sabrina later on after he completely forgot to the girl is picking her up from the airport and bringing her back to his home. Baffled that he should that she should live in the same place.

But then all this gets pushed to the wayside as Sabrina is very flirtatious with him and he's about to perform his signature move of bringing champagne to the tennis court; So that he may woo her.
But his brother Linus (played by Humphrey Bogart) isn't having any of that and somehow convinces his younger brother to sit down with wine glasses still in his pocket this incapacitates him.

Now Linas has to come up with a scheme.
And it's here that we get the sitcom style love triangle as Linas decides to flirt with Sabrina to get her mind off of David.
This doesn't really work it first but over time becomes all the more potent as the two of them learn they have more in common with each other than previously thought.
Including a bouts of suicide which is something that you wouldn't expect would be talked about in a movie of this nature.
But alas there it is.
We even get a scene earlier where Sabrina is shown trying to commit suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning by running a couple of cars in a garage.

Now Linas has to come up with a scheme.
And it's here that we get the sitcom style love triangle as Linas decides to flirt with Sabrina to get her mind off of David.
This doesn't really work it first but over time becomes all the more potent as the two of them learn they have more in common with each other than previously thought.
Including a bouts of suicide which is something that you wouldn't expect would be talked about in a movie of this nature.
But alas there it is.
We even get a scene earlier where Sabrina is shown trying to commit suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning by running a couple of cars in a garage.

Of course as the film goes on the scheme starts to fall apart as Linus and Sabrina start to have feelings for each other and Sabrina finds herself more and more disinterested in David which isn't all that surprising given that he doesn't have that much screen time in the film.
He's got a semi beefy roll towards the first half of the First Act but otherwise is kind of reluctant to pop up in the rest of the movie. Mainly because his butt got full of glass and now he's lying on a speciality made plastic hammock with a hole cut in the middle so he can recuperate.
It's a whole thing.

I'm  happy they didn't have the fighting between the two brothers over Sabrina, not only is a overly cliched but it's just insulting to the woman who was supposed to marry Davis in the first place.
She had nothing against the guy, she may have had some genuine love for him and at the end of the film he even has love for her.

Therefore the second girl who's usually outside of the love triangle doesn't get completely screwed over.
Which is kind of nice especially considering the immense buildup they have towards this girl's imminent demise at a stock meeting. They even have an introduction of smelling salts because they think the poor girl's going to faint.

The best part of the movie is a third act. It's at that Strange point where both characters are falling for each other, but they're not entirely aware of how they're going to deal with it.
As Linus wants to get rid of her to maintain a business profit and she wants to get rid of him so she can go off to marrying the guy she thinks she loves.

It's just the two of them discovering quite quickly with one another that their original plans didn't work out and it's actually David at the end of the movie who's able to arrange the two of them to have a happy ending.

There's a lot of minor confrontation inside the penthouse office that Linus works at.
It's done in that really nice and direct dramatic way where the two characters just tell each other there not planning to join one another on this upcoming Cruise back to Paris..
Instead of doing the old sitcom trip of confusing the situation and making the two of angry at each other for no good reason.

Nope it's just depression and unhappy people as they realised their love wasn't really meant to be. But then we still get our happy Hollywood ending where they do hook up with each other.
Because if you're going to make people depressed for 40 minutes you might as well give him a glimmer of hope at the end.
At least in a romantic comedy of this sort.

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