Barefoot in the Park meets Illya x Gaby
So, I just discovered this movie on Netflix and I feel like ‘Barefoot in the Park’ (1967) would work so beatifully as Illya x Gaby or could at least serve as inspiration for a 1000 prompts.
The two main characters (Redford and Fonda) are newlyweds. He’s a stuck up, tall, blonde lawyer, totally smitten but also annoyed as hell with his free spirited, carefree young wife who makes him move into a freezing, tiny apartment in a brownstone with a hole in the skylight, up a flight of 5, nay 6 stairs.
He’s very serious and stern and would just like to prep for his espionage job court case in the morning, please, but his wife won’t let him work because she’s too busy demanding proper goodbye kisses, shocking unsuspecting people in the hallway by wearing her husband’s pajamas…
…and embarrassing him by letting people at his work, people whose respect he needs, overhear that, for a lawyer, he is a very good kisser…
She’s constantly trying to seduce him and he just doesn’t get this whirlwind of a woman, he’s just so tired, he has all these case files to go over and he hasn’t really slept the last six nights and…
There is also a delightful scene where their eccentric neighbour (Napoleon??) takes them to an Albanian restaurant and Redford’s character is accosted by a belly dancer, looking so exasperated.
And then Jane Fonda’s character gets up to dance around him, while he looks so wonderfully grumpy and put out. It’s glorious!
There’s a whole, long fight scene between them where she accuses him of being a stuffed shirt and a bore who can’t have fun and that she can’t even tell when he’s drunk because he seems no different to his usual prim and proper self and then to prove her wrong he goes and gets SMASHED and walks BAREFOOT in the park since he wants to prove to her that he is, in fact, not a bore.
It also really really helps that Robert Redford is sort of a dead ringer for Illya.
Here are a few prompts from the movie that could work beautifully for Illya x Gaby:
She, following him out of the room, after they’ve been holed up in the hotel for a week: “Where are you going?”
(clings onto his lapels)
He, irritated and charmed at the same time: “Work. I have to go to work. I don’t do this for a living, you know?”
–
“What was that? A kiss?” (follows him out of the room in only a pajama top)
He, mortified: “Dear, would you get inside, this is a nice hotel.”
She, insulted: “Was that a kiss?”
He sighs, exasperated: “I can’t kiss you anymore. My lips are numb. Now will you please go inside?”
“If you don’t give me a real kiss, I’m going to give you back your pajamas. Right now.” (starts unbuttoning the men’s pajama top she’s wearing)
–
She picks him up from the bus stop, lays a big smooch on him. He is reluctantly into it, slightly embarrassed.
She: “I’ve decided to meet you here every day.”
He, stern: “You will not meet me here every day. The bus driver will think you’re my mother.”
–
“Grouch, grouch grouch! You weren’t that grouchy with me a six this morning under the covers.”
“Do you have to carry on a personal conversation with me on the stairs?”
–
“I’m beginning to wonder if you are capable of having a good time!”
“Why, because I like to wear my gloves in winter?”
“No, because there isn’t the least bit of adventure in you. You know what you are? You’re a watcher. There are watchers in this world and there are doers. Well tonight you watched, and I did.”
“Well it was a little bit harder to watch what you did than to do what I was watching!”
Sorry for the long ass post. This movie gave me unexpected feels.
