Pretty in Pink

I watched it again and forgot how much I like it. Not the film school way—nothing about Hughes’s camera work or the brat pack mythology. Just the thing itself, the feeling of it. Duckie’s desperation, Blane’s weakness, Andie’s armor made of thrift-store clothes and spite. The prom at the end doesn’t matter; what sticks is the longing. Everyone wants something they can’t have, and some of them know it. The synth score still sounds like loneliness. It’s a teen movie that never condescends, and it’s full of people who aren’t beautiful in the way the movie industry usually demands—they’re just there, wanting things, making mistakes. That probably matters less than it did when I first cared about it, but the film’s honesty about how much wanting something can hurt, how class gets between you and people you like, how you can want to be liked and still be too proud to ask for it—that doesn’t date.