Sabrina (1995)

Based on the play Sabrina Fair, by Samuel A. Taylor, first staged in 1953, and on the film adaptation which came out the following year.

Sabrina lives in the servants' quarters of a big mansion where her father works as a chauffeur. She has a crush on the boss's younger son David, who is a womanizer and a bon-vivant. The family business is run by David's older brother Linus. Sabrina's father's employer sends her to Paris to do an internship at a fashion magazine, all expenses paid. When she returns, some things have changed around the house, but she has changed as well.

Remaking a 50s movie without some plot modifications is very problematic, and this film suffers for it. Capitalism in the 90s was very different from Capitalism in the 50s. Marriage as a prerequisite for a business merger is a very rare occurrence, to say the least. To complicate things further, the romantic sensibility of the original film was already not exactly in tune with the ages. I do not remember the 1954 film all that well, so I checked for differences between the versions on the IMDB site. It seems the only relevant updating they did was to give the female characters a less subordinate position regarding their working status. But this is perfunctory considering that the main character is modeled after ancient fairy tale princesses and such. When you think about the film, it is hard not to notice that the most interesting character is, after all, Linus, not Sabrina. The film seems to want to demonstrate that it is unhealthy to devote one's life to work before one has sorted out a few essential aspects of one's personal life.

Rating: 32