Plot
High school sweethearts David (Woody Harrelson) and Diana Murphy (Demi Moore) are a married couple who travel to Las Vegas, hoping they can win enough money to finance David's fantasy real estate project. They place their money on red in roulette and lose. After gambling away all of their savings, they encounter billionaire John Gage (Robert Redford). Gage is attracted to Diana and offers David one million dollars to spend a night with her. After a difficult night, David and Diana decide to accept the offer, and a contract is signed the next day. Gage flies Diana to a private yacht where he offers her a chance to void the deal and return to her husband if he loses a toss of his lucky coin. Gage calls it correctly and she spends the night with him.
Although he had hoped to forget the whole incident, David grows increasingly insecure about his relationship with Diana, consumed with a fear that she remains involved with Gage; this insecurity is heightened by the fact Diana discovers that Gage has bought their home/property while it was going into foreclosure. Because of this tension on their relationship, David and Diana separate. Gage actively persists and renews his advances on Diana. Although she initially resists, Diana eventually consents to spending time with him and a relationship develops. David, meanwhile, realizes he cannot go on without the love of his life. When Diana files for a standing order, David makes one final attempt to win her back by signing the standing order papers and giving the million dollars away. David bares his soul as to why he allowed the night to happen. It is clearly a turning point for both of them.
Gage sees how Diana looks at David and recognizes that, even if she stayed with him, their relationship would never achieve the intensity she had with David. Later in the car with Gage, it is clear Diana has made up her mind to return to David when she says to Gage that they need to talk. Gage, realizing that she longs to return to David, makes up a story that she was only the latest in a long line of "million-dollar girls". Diana realizes that Gage is doing this to make it easy for her to leave, thanks Gage and returns to David. Before she leaves, he gives her his lucky coin, which is revealed to be double sided. She returns to the pier where David proposed, only to find him there waiting. They confess their love for one another and join hands.
Read more about this topic: Indecent Proposal
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)