Here is where I learned something about myself: I really hate Audrey Hepburn. I don’t think she’s cute, I don’t think she’s funny, and I find her emaciated form actually kind of unsettling. In the big moment when everyone at the party is oohing and awwing over her in that dress, I couldn’t stop staring at her mantis shoulders. She’s the original manic pixie dream girl (the way she plays her suicide attempt is almost excruciatingly adorable) but I find her even less tolerable than Zooey Deschanel. At least Zooey has that super-dark eye make-up I’m into because I’m dumb and like women who look like raccoons (shout out to that one shot of Sissy Spacek in Badlands). It doesn’t help that her character here is almost irredeemably stupid. I LOVE YOU BECAUSE I LOVE YOU is one of my least favorite conceits in films like this, and it’s her main driving force for a good majority of the film. It’s hard to root for someone to find happiness when you know that the root of their desire for the person is basically “I want to be rich, and they have money”.
Thank God for Humphrey Bogart and William Holden, who are pitch-perfect. Bogart in particular gives an astonishingly ambiguous performance, making you think he could either love or not care about Sabrina at any time. He’s a totally lovable character (with his childish glee over his new plastic formula, I might even say he’s adorkable?) and the film definitely gets better when it begins to shift perspective from Sabrina’s character to his. It’s minor Wilder, one I can’t see myself revisiting much, but it features one of Bogart’s greatest ever performances. B-
Martha Marcy Nash and Young 