The Woman in Red

The Woman in Red is a 1984 American romantic comedy film directed by and starring Gene Wilder. Wilder also wrote the script, adapting it from the Yves Robert film Pardon Mon Affaire (Un éléphant ça trompe énormément). It co-stars Charles Grodin, Gilda Radner, Joseph Bologna, Judith Ivey, and Kelly LeBrock. The film won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "I Just Called to Say I Love You", written and performed by Stevie Wonder. The film follows a married man who becomes infatuated with another woman and his amusingly unsuccessful attempts to first meet and then become intimate with her. Plot San Francisco advertising man Theodore "Teddy" Pierce is amused by, then infatuated with Charlotte, a beautiful woman whose red dress is billowed by a gust of wind from crossing over a ventilation grate, exposing her red satin string bikini panties. Despite his interest, Teddy is already happily married to Didi, but he cannot get this woman out of his mind. When his friend Joe, who has an affair of his own, is abandoned by his wife, who leaves with everything, Teddy gets cold feet and decides to forget it. Still, when he tells his friends Buddy, Joe, and Michael, they encourage him, and after meeting the woman again through his office window, he tries to ask her for a date, but mistakenly phones Ms. Milner, a plain ad-agency employee who is flattered by his interest. From the beginning, his attempts at an affair are doomed, as he creates a charade to get to the date, but Didi tells him that their neighbor told them to take care of her small boy. Ms. Milner gets her revenge by bending Teddy's car antenna and scratching his car. Ms. Milner later tries to make amends, but later when Teddy sees that she is the one who got the memo for the date, he flees, and once more she gets her revenge by letting go of Teddy's car brake, causing him to crash his car. Ms. Milner later acts amicably with Teddy, because she already started seeing another work colleague, much to Teddy's confusion. Charlotte later agrees to meet for dinner with Teddy after he steadfastly asks for one, but once again, his plans fail when he receives a call from Charlotte saying she is in Los Angeles working and to go meet her. He creates another charade by writing a fake telegram from work and sending it to himself, telling him to go to Los Angeles, but due to the airport being fogged in, his flight is detoured to San Diego.