That Kind of Woman

Throughout That Kind of Woman Sophia Loren demonstrates the mystical allure that is “star power” and provides the only true point of interest for the audience. The script is a middling soap opera about a kept woman who seems perfectly content until she meets a pin-up boy GI and decides to throw everything away for him and “true love.” Tab Hunter, a delicious piece of adornment, generates no real chemistry or sparks with Loren. There romance is more of a polite and agreeable friendship than the passionate searing that comes along with a life altering love affair. George Sanders, wonderfully droll as ever, is the man who is footing the bill for Loren’s life of luxury. And Loren, who could give an erotic charge to anything mundane, radiates the kind of star power charisma that is sorely lacking in today’s cinema. She was a movie star who could act, but was mostly given that challenge in her wonderful films with Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio Di Sica. That Kind of Woman isn’t awful, but painfully artificial and devoid of any real chemistry or depth in the central relationship. It is mildly daring for a film to acknowledge the concept of a “kept” woman and sex as something possibly devoid of love in the 50s.