"When did you become one of these women who just waits and is still waiting?"

Let us imagine, in purely hypothetical terms, that you finally get around to writing down your romance novel after what has seemed like over a year of pointless blogging. You package the manuscript up and send it to the offices of Mills & Boon, Harlequin or a similarly witless publisher and they love your little book and release it to the undiscerning masses. There it would stand on the shelves of low-brow bookshops, if those still exist when this purely hypothetical situation occurs, and it would have websites on the internet dedicated to it and a few people would even buy it, adding it to the list of books they will never find the time to read. With sales a little disappointing, however, your novel requires a promotional push and at this point, as luck would contrive it, a film company from Hollywood secures the rights and turns your words on the page into a bright, glossy blockbusting romantic comedy. Suddenly, as the movie opens to unconscionable reviews across the whole world, your can-do book is thrust into the limelight, the Zeitgeist, the big time, and at long last, there is recognition for your pseudonym.

Unfortunately for you, dear author, Hollywood has something of a reputation for wrecking perfectly decent source material and the movie based on your novel is a hopeless mess of cynical focus group-findings and romcom clichés starring romcom stars. Anyone who sees the film instantly detests it and has no intention of subjecting themselves to your book as well, believing you are to blame for the idiocy and shallow characters. Count yourselves fortunate, therefore, that you have never attempted such a thing as writing a romance and your pseudonym remains an unheard private joke between you and the occasional readers of your weblog who accidentally wound up there while image-searching Brad Pitt.

Such a thing does happen, however, and as you may have worked out from this post's title, the book and film in question is Something Borrowed. The chick-lit by Emily Giffin was scripted into a chick-flick by Jennie Snyder Urman and directed by Luke Greenfield, famed for The Girl Next Door, that one about the porn star and the young man who rescues her from pornography with his intelligence and non-pornographic penis. Something Borrowed is the first in a series by Giffin, and was followed by Something Blue, continuing the adventures of the original's most irredeemably awful supporting player. We can only hope Old and New are in the works, and they also follow the exploits of horribly obnoxious young people, around the age of thirty and facing important romantic dilemmas and dealing with themes such as identity, ethics, social stigmas, drunken one night stands, pretending to be homosexual instead of breaking up and aggressive games of beach badminton. Something Borrowed, meanwhile, has Ginnifer Goodwin, her from Valentine's Day, and Hollywood's go to girl for likeable yet their definition of ugly, playing Rachel, a likeable yet in-no-way-ugly lady about to turn thirty and in love with her best friend's fiancé. Kate Hudson's remaining audience goodwill takes the role of Darcy, despicable, self-involved, duplicitous and mean-spirited, and despite the obvious discord with reality, the life-long best friend of Rachel.

As the story begins, Darcy has thrown Rachel a surprise 30th birthday party, which she has used solely to boost her own popularity, because Darcy is not a nice person. In flashbacks we see Rachel at lawyer school where they teach young people how to be lawyers. There she meets the handsome, charming and permanently-tanned Dex, the privileged boy coasting on his looks, charm and supreme intelligence. He and Rachel bond over Torts and inappropriate giggling in libraries and sure enough they fall in love. However, Rachel cannot bring herself to see what such a chiselled, wealthy man would find attractive about her, and fluffs her lines, playing the friend card when Darcy swoops in trying to set them up on a proper date. Because she is not a nice person Darcy then ensnares Dex for herself, much to Dex's disappointment, because he likes Rachel, despite himself. Back in the present day of how we assume glamorous Manhattanites live Rachel casually admits to having had a crush on Dex back at lawyer school, which naturally causes she and him to sleep together a series of times. Uh oh, Rachel. You've only gone and fallen in love with the man you've always been in love with. What will you do now, as he is about to marry your best friend, and even though Darcy is not a nice person and you don't like her and she doesn't actually love Dex, she is still your best friend. Perhaps the thing to do at this point is just wait things out. Dex will eventually come to a decision about which of the women he is sleeping with he wants to continue to sleep with, especially the choice is so obvious, it is either the lady he is engaged to or the one he wants to be with.

As Rachel explains to her needless John Krasinski-voiced voice of reason, this is a complicated situation and the emotionally-mature thing to do is let the wedding day move ever closer without deciding anything. Firstly, there is Dex's depressed, suicidal mother who is over-joyed at the prospect of nuptials. Would cancelling the day also manage to cancel his mother's life? Secondly, there is Darcy, the jilted bride. Either Rachel will gain a husband and lose her best friend, or she will lose the love of her life and have to watch him sorrowfully growing old with her best friend, regretting every day. You would expect with such a strong scenario that Emily Giffin and then the film-makers would choose to pursue these topics through any other genre than frothy, romantic farce starring Kate Hudson. By doing so, both versions of Something Borrowed are unable to properly explore any pertinent themes, instead contriving Darcy having an affair herself, John Krasinski moving to London for the sequel, and Dex calling off the wedding and the script just forgetting his mother ever existed. Any feelings the audience might have had for the central friendship are quashed by the heavy-handed handling of Darcy's character. She is a phony, superficial moron, using Botox, manipulating friends into falsely admiring her and angry at Dex and Rachel when she is herself pregnant with another man's baby. Losing her is no great loss to anyone, especially the audience, until the penultimate scene where reconciliation is implied. The final scene, however, which hints at the plot of Something Blue appears as a nasty threat we viewers should take as declaration of war.

As the names of the hundreds responsible roll to the tedious noise of two ballads, one can only conclude everybody involved made a number of mistakes. Many of these result directly from the treatment of the material. To examine the politics of relationships and the ethics of betrayal the characters must be presented in a believable way, representative to the protagonist's emotional journey, or exaggerated for comedic effect. Something Borrowed cannot decide which path to follow, and we end up with listless leads we are supposed to wish well, and an antagonist so vindictive and implausible her climatic discovery of Dex and Rachel's disloyalty has no satisfaction, pathos or resonance to anyone still watching. We are invited to dislike Dex throughout, as he strings both women along and suggests genuine connection with Darcy's vacuous consumerism, yet we share in Rachel's idolisation of her boyish dreaminess, and sympathise with his worries for his mother. As the film concludes with him abandoning the wedding and failing to mention his mother's reaction we are happy Rachel has ended up with her ideal man, although we struggle to see what she sees in him, especially as there is John Krasinski and his lovable puppy-dog face, the only one showing affection and concern for anyone else during the entirety of the running time. Giffin may claim her novel delves deeper into characterisation and finds the neuroses, uncertainty and self-loathing at the heart of every romantic entanglement, and perhaps she does, but Bewildered Heart has no interest in reading the book having now seen the film.

"If he was stressed it was no more than he deserved. He'd tried to buy her baby"

When we left Stacy and Franco, our lovers from The Millionaire's Indecent Proposal, she had accepted his offer of one million euros to be his around-the-clock mistress for the month before the wedding of a shared acquaintance. Unbeknownst to Stacy, of course, Franco had bought her as part of a bet with his father, the winner due to command the controlling stake in Midas Chocolates, the family business. Stacy was instantly seduced by the millionaire chocolatier's Gallic charm, strapping physique, ability to speak two languages, insistence that she have sex with him, and his luxurious mansion. Equally, Franco was intrigued by Stacy's sexy ordinariness, practical shoes, and willingness to trade her body for money. It seemed a short-term match made in Mills & Boon heaven, and for several chapters the relationship had all the hallmarks of an actual relationship. The couple talked and ate meals together, made love in a series of conservative locations, went clubbing and danced with their bodies pressed into one another, and constantly worried what their friends thought of their union. It was only when emotions got in the way that trouble brewed. Suddenly, Stacy's initial infatuation had turned into genuine infatuation and her casual attitude towards the financial aspect of their agreement had Franco questioning whether Stacy was even a prostitute at all. Would the twosome be able to recover and enjoy a lifetime of wedded bliss and baby-making?

Stacy Reeves is not your standard unemployed accountant from a city in the United States that probably doesn't exist, however. She has an unaffected beauty, long chestnut hair and azure eyes. As the book nears its conclusion the author, Emilie Rose, finally rewards us with a physical description of her heroine, where we learn her breasts and bottom are splendid and she has psychic nipples. Even more important than these vital statistics is her haunted back-story which Stacy is reluctant to confess to anyone, until she confesses all to Franco in a fit of narrative necessity. This might have come as a revelation to the suave millionaire, but we readers had suspected something was screwy all along, as Rose could not help slipping hints at this previous tragedy into the narration. Would you care to know the shocking bombshell without facing the unenviable task of reading the book? Well, when Stacy was a child her mother fled her abusive, wealthy husband and lived a life on the lam, struggling to make ends meet and always afraid the man she deserted would track her down and have his revenge. Stacy's full comprehension of the truth would come one day when returning home she found her parents dead, by that classic cliché of romance fiction, a murder-suicide. Naturally, the poor girl has never been the same since, and has developed a vehement distrust of rich men, red carpeting, violence and obsessive love affairs that end in murder, suicide or a combination of the two.

Meanwhile, Franco has his own sordid confession to reveal. His ex-wife had an abortion without alerting him of her pregnant status, causing the many awkward lulls in conversation that led to their divorce. Furthermore, Franco's mother was a wanton harridan, indulging in drugs, partying, drinking and men who weren't Franco's father, which somehow resulted in her death, by what Franco claims was a chemical overdose. With such a tragic past and unwillingness to trust, love or have respectful attitudes towards the opposite sex it would appear Stacy and Franco have all the groundwork needed for a long and successful coupling. Despite what should be happy news, both characters remain pensive and libidinous. If Stacy is not the gold-digging, one-track-minded, mercenary harlot all women are then Franco loses the bet with his father and, because of the terms of their wager, will owe him nothing. For Stacy, if she and Franco are in love she will have to remain in Monaco and turn her back on the United States, the country of her birth and neuroses, where she has no friends, family or prospects. Truly there is much riding on whether Franco and Stacy can get over themselves, be reasonable and conclude that while their relationship is based solely on sex and personal admittances alleging murder against family members that is more than enough to mean they're soul-mates and suitable to raise children together.

Unlike the majority of Mills & Boon novels we read as examples of the genre The Millionaire's Indecent Proposal offers distinct arcs to both hero and heroine, with each mirroring the other, allowing Rose to study the healing power of commitment and the inconsequentiality of capitalism in matters of the heart. The romantic interludes of our leads is played against a typical backdrop of resplendent grandeur, but thankfully because of Stacy's history all the glamour and wealth is framed by a paranoia of money's corruptive force. Intertwined is a supposedly charming sub-plot involving Candace and Vincent's nuptials, he the millionaire sports car enthusiast and she the nurse who treated him after his crash and fell for him despite his facial scarring. With such strong potential for a multi-layered examination of themes through the journeys of compelling characters with often self-destructive motivations The Millionaire's Indecent Proposal becomes even more disappointing. By choosing to tell her tale through the genre of badly-written pornography, author Emilie Rose undermines the emotional twists of the story and sacrifices nuance in favour of sex scenes, hedonism and occasional unsubstantiated dithering. The predictable, penultimate sidestep all romances contain where the couple fight over a misunderstanding only to realise their stupidity pages later is replaced here with a broken condom. Stacy and Franco fear their month-long orgy might have led to a baby and are forced to re-evaluate their feelings for one another. Franco offers to buy the child for a second million euros, but explains he will never marry. At this point Stacy begins to wonder if he actually is the man for her. All ends perfectly half a page later though, when he admits the whole thing had been a bet with his dad, which she finds adorable, and they kiss and promise to wed.

Any semblance of hope the reader might have had for the high quality of the first in this Desire 2-in-1 evaporates and we realise we have been cheated out of anything meaningful or fun and instead given an endless parade of frivolity where the only threats to happiness aren't so much squandered as completely abandoned. The story is nothing more than an old-fashioned, sexist fairytale involving a relatively innocent might-as-well-be-a-virgin who discovers her sensuality through being bought and taught by an arrogant, experienced foreigner. Emilie Rose's attempts to characterise Stacy's lack of worldliness by making her the victim of domestic violence means she writes herself into a thematic cul-de-sac, trivialising the misfortune and solving everything with a well-placed penis and a mind-boggling amount of money no one could relate to. Instead of exploring any of the subjects raised by the concept the book seems determined to avoid them. Franco's greatest concern is losing his true identity to his material worth. He rejects women for finding his millions more compelling than him, but he defines his seduction techniques as acts of cost and only respects Stacy when she refuses his extravagant gifts. His challenges merely validate his prejudices, yet he receives no comeuppance and learns no lesson. His father loses his young girlfriend when he hands over his business and Vincent only knows Candace's affections are real because of his grotesque disfigurement. A story involving the usually rightfully ignored territory of how the wealthy search for appreciation of who they are and not what they represent should find more interesting ways to do so and should not blatantly fetishise opulence in every sexual scenario.

As for the ladies, Rose treats them with a shallow disregard typically associated with a contemptuous billionaire or a Harlequin writer. Either the women are superficial, calculating whores only interested in themselves, as with Angeline, Franco's mother and Lisette, or they are virtuous angels dedicated to the desires of their men, such as Candace and Stacy. Finally, in the case of Madeleine or Amelia so peripheral are they to the central story they are forced to run away to the bathroom in the final chapter for reasons only explained in sequels, continuing the adventures of holidaying Americans in Monte Carlo. Perhaps we can expect a cameo appearance from Stacy and Franco, or Candace, Vincent and their baby, and we can catch a glimpse of their futures of countless offspring and disagreements over decorating the living room. By this time Franco may have found a role for Stacy in the Midas accounting office, and she will have thrown herself into work to avoid accepting the ten year age gap between she and her husband as they await the birth of their first child. Amelia and Madeleine will visit with their own millionaire princes and playboys and everyone will sail out on yachts to watch fireworks to the faint noise of the Grand Prix. Stacy will look to her friends and say all this could too be yours if you're willing to over-look your man's egotism and misogyny and concentrate instead on less fleeting virtues such as his muscular frame and abundant affluence, and Amelia and Madeleine will stare off picturing their own glorious wedding days and Emilie Rose will type THE END and she will have churned out yet another book.

“She couldn’t help feeling she’d sold her soul to the devil, and she hoped she didn’t live to regret it”

On the AFI’s list of the top one hundred romantic movies made by the United States the twenty-first entry is Pretty Woman, the much-adored fairytale starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere as prostitute and man who buys prostitute, respectively. Of the one hundred films there are only two which tell of the world’s oldest profession and Breakfast at Tiffany’s is tenuously the other. There are as many hooker-themed films as ghost love stories then, making spirits and prostitutes equally appealing to cinema audiences. Pretty Woman sidesteps social or moral issues by presenting their adorable street-walker as a likeable, naïve waif on her very first day in her new occupation, who agrees to the sleazy corporate raider’s unconventional request because he offers a good deal of money and he’s charming Richard Gere. From there the film descends into heavy-handed visual metaphors, feel-good triumph over adversity and scenes borrowed from My Fair Lady of the Night. From a budget of $14 million the movie grossed over $450 million, made superficiality cool and became a favourite among female audiences despite numerous actors turning down the Vivien role, including Michelle Pfeiffer, Daryl Hannah and Jennifer Jason Leigh, because they found the script degrading to women.

The power of the concept remains alive and lucrative for the authors of Mills & Boon, as we again have had to read with The Millionaire’s Indecent Proposal. While Hollywood argues that hookers-with-hearts-of-gold can be reasoned into non-hookers-with-hearts-of-gold with enough money, Harlequin and her sister publishers make a bolder claim. With enough money women can not only be prostituted, but then civilized and brought back into society as submissive wife, which would have been a character arc too far for even Audrey Hepburn. Stacy Reeves begins chapter four by accepting her payment, albeit with a few conditions that don’t seem important, and ends the chapter accepting her first orgasm courtesy of Franco’s masculinity. Life is good for Stacy and until we read on so it shall remain. Meanwhile, here at Bewildered Heart there is the bountiful topic of Solicititilation to discuss, and why the subgenre can be allowed to exist when it appears to be offensive to women, prostitutes and Mediterranean tycoons.

Mating interests strategised over years of evolution have brought us to the point in time where wealth is a desirable quality in a partner, and this dates back to the beginning of humankind, to the caveman with the largest rock, through the prosperous heroes found in respected romantic fiction, by Jane Austen and all those Bronte’s, to the disrespected annals of Harlequin Presents a poorly-written retreads of the classics. Women want to have babies, and in order to avoid self-imposed moral stigma of having many babies with many different fathers they seek one father, wed in holy matrimony where anything goes, to beget the many babies which will bring them a life purpose and contentment. A mother’s love is never enough, however, and therefore in order for these babies to be provided for and raised healthy, the potential father must have a fortune and an athletic body of rippling muscles and few venereal diseases. Solicititilation plays directly into these basic feminine desires, as the man in question must have much money to squander and be impossibly handsome. The narrative devices to bring him from man willing to buy women to a man who doesn’t proposition women with cash motivations is plenty to base an arc on.

Romantic heroes unfailingly begin their novels conceited and arrogant, an attitude all affluent, gorgeous men are born with and retain until a delicate female is able to unburden them of their personal traits, thus rendering them marriage material. Within the context of the genre the structure works remarkably thoroughly. All Mills & Boon men are created in their author's idealised vision of a desirable male, and usually separated by non-heroic men by thickness of hair. Once you have your perfect man, however, described in magnificent detail, their only faults can come from within. Invariably they shall be wealthy, glamorous, worldly, respected, powerful and intelligent, but with these material and emotional virtues comes an off-putting self-satisfaction, as if they believe that through their irresistible beauty, charm and infinite funds they are able to claim whatever they please.

For juxtaposition, the virginal poor yin to the divorced rich yang, our writer wisely chooses a heroine who has paid the obvious price for not being a man, and that price is financial. Only within this set-up is there potential for us, the gentle reader, to credibly accept Stacy agreeing to sell her body for €1,000,000 to Franco Constantine, devious chocolatier. There are few secrets to the appeal of the archetypal romantic plot, where an innocent gamine in a mysterious land meets an enigmatic, guarded land-owner, and although initially distrustful of his arrogant nature, discovers his sensitive side and brings out the best in him with selfless loving. However, why this has regressed to Solicititilation is somewhat bewildering, as if the progression of the characters involve exacerbating their faults by pushing money to the forefront of the tension.

Why do romance fiction authors feel compelled to tell such tales, as there is no narrative-incentive to creating a dilemma for a heroine and then spending the majority of the novel defending the characters and explaining how none of this is how it seems? Yes, Stacy Reeves has sold her body for money to a man she is afraid of because of deep-rooted, unresolved issues with her father, but she needs the money for noble reasons, will pay tax on it and refuses additional gifts. Also, did you read the description of Franco Constantine? He is utterly delectable and has access to free chocolate. Stacy would have slept with him for free, so hold those degrading accusations for the next heroine who sells her body to a billionaire. Stacy is unlike those sluts, because Stacy is modest and doesn’t want money, only what she will be able to spend it on. Furthermore, Franco is European and cynical because his ex-wife had an abortion without his knowledge and his father is frittering away his money on gold-diggers, so Franco is hardened by experience and just needs to meet a woman from the USA to teach him that it is only non-US citizens who are whores. Now, with that in mind the whole prostitution dilemma sounds suitably agreeable and beneficial to all parties.

Author Emilie Rose may have wished to exhibit the destructive effect Stacy's complicity has on her soul, but instead she weakly trots out guilt-ridden asides through an interior monologue, with Stacy ashamed of Franco's attention and her enjoyment of her newfound sexuality. She considers the money on occasion, but is thankful for the life the financial backing will afford her. We can only assume this rationalisation and watering-down of prostitution stems from the novelist's own neuroses about writing chauvinistic and misanthropic stories and then selling them to women for payment from their arrogant, controlling publisher, with offices in London, Paris and New York and a heady history of success and sexual experience. Authors tremble at the knees in the presence of Mills & Boon and are happy to give up their more dignified aspirations of writing romances in the style of their icons and settling for making an under-whelming living as sell-outs, happy to abandon love in poverty for a lucrative imitation of the real thing.