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Manila Bulletin devider Opinion devider A fair exchange

A fair exchange

Published Aug 12, 2021 12:02 am
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza As I promised myself, no mention of the C word, not today. After watching the nth replay of My Fair Lady, the air feels bright, the space is light, the mood is right as rain and the pretty things it grows – flowers, grass, crops, the umbrella factory. My Fair Lady the movie was produced in 1964 and restored not long ago for Netflix by digital artists and technicians, geniuses all. The present generation may find it full of holes, like cheese, but not even the most romantic, most successful K-drama can hold a whisk of a feather to this Lerner-Loewe musical. A musical spins enchantment in another dimension (which Korea’s “Hallyu” hasn’t been able to imitate. . . not yet). Based on the myth of Galatea and Pygmalion, which in turn provided the inspiration for George Bernard Shaw’s stage play, Pygmalion, My Fair Lady stars the one and only Audrey Hepburn as the flower vendor whose life is upgraded when her guttersnipe-cultured English is transformed by the phonetics expert played by Rex Harrison. Hepburn’s charm and chic are recognizable to fashionable millennials, but Harrison -- ? Does it matter that the pair are not au courant? What matters is the story, and with it its characters. As entertainment, it matters that the treatment is as Broadway-Hollywoodish as it can get. Lavish sets, marvelous costumes, a production design whose every line, dot, color is highlighted by the wondrous technology of film restoration, allowing a freshness to sparkle on the screen more effectively than the original version ever did! Displayed as “trending on Netflix,” My Fair Lady is a refreshing change -- full of fun, wit and humor, memorable songs with lyrics that rhyme magically. “I could have danced all night,” “I’ve grown accustomed to her face” -- what a departure from unending K-dramas, international serials with English captions, American movies, documentaries recounting horrible crimes that happened in Mexico, Argentina, etc. Nothing as “loverly” as My Fair Lady. The word “trending” gives hope that Fair Lady has found an enchanted new audience in the Philippines, never mind that it was produced for their parents and grandparents long ago, when love stories did not necessarily revolve around angst and agony and twisted participants living inside tortured souls.

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