The Woman Who Loves Luxury 2: why The Devil Wears Prada head back to basics in Vietnam | Video

Ssince it’s a modern sequel – a classic film that managed to introduce timeless words and phrases to the cultural lexicon – you might think that The Devil Wears Prada 2 wouldn’t have had to do a lot of work to attract audiences. But this is where you can go wrong.

For example, someone unfamiliar with the first film might wonder if, since the title is Satanic, it might be scary. Or maybe the name sounds like an angry film about the role of designer clothes in the late capitalism era. So it makes sense to do what the Vietnamese have done and just call the movie The Woman Who Loves Luxury 2.

Isn’t that perfect? The Woman Who Loves Jewels 2 is an almost perfect title, as it immediately informs the viewer that a) there is a woman in the film, b) the woman loves jewels and c) this is the sequel. Of course, you could argue that the movie didn’t mention it directly who The woman loves luxury goods (these words are similar to many women in the film), and maybe that is not specific enough. Besides, the theme could also work on Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Confessions of a Shopaholic or Sex and the City or The Bling Ring or Marie Antoinette. But this is just a story.

In fact, A Woman Who Loves Luxury 2 should be added to the list of Movies That Had the Best Title in a Different Language. Luckily for us, it’s a big canon. There are many films that, for whatever reason, have had their titles changed in different markets. For the most part, new topics have been improving on them.

For example, the title Bad Santa manages to sell about 80% of what the film aims to achieve, but there is still some ambiguity. Does the Santa of Bad Santa have untrustworthy qualities, or is he untrustworthy? Fortunately, the Czech Republic managed to fix this, by offering a name that translates to Santa Is a Pervert. At the same time, you know exactly what kind of movie you are going to see.

There are others. Germany has a good reputation for this, renaming Annie Hall as The Urban Neurotic and Airplane! such as A Strange Journey in a Crazy Airplane. It’s also worth mentioning that it dubbed Die Hard With a Reveance as Die Slowly, Now More Than Ever, which is the closest a film has come to sounding like a Covid-era social construction ad.

As evidenced by The Woman Who Loves Luxury 2, however, Asia is where you can find the best things. In China’s hands alone, Deep Impact became Heaven and Earth Great Collision, Knocked Up became One Night, Big Belly and Pretty Woman became the undisputed I’ll Marry a Whore to Save Money. Admittedly, the country doesn’t have a good reputation for this – its decision to retitle The Full Monty as The Six Naked Pigs would have offended fans of naked pigs – but you have to admit it’s good.

However, you could argue that some countries take this too far. Although Thelma and Louise is a familiar name for the film (Who are Thelma and Louise, and why should we care about them?), it is better than the entire Mexican title, which has a subtitle that translates to Unexpected Endings. Obviously, that explains a lot about the plot. It would be like renaming The Sixth Sense as The Boy Who Saw Ghosts, or The Usual Suspects as Kevin Spacey Was Keyser Söze All Along.

It is worth pointing out that the most cited incidents of this are not entirely true. For some time, there is a myth that in some countries James Bond movies were known as Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Perhaps this legend gained traction because it is the best distillation of 007 ever told, but the truth is that no film has ever been made with this title. In fact, the term was coined by an Italian journalist who wrote about the behavior in 1962. song of the same name for the Thunderball soundtrack and the theme song for the 2005 Robert Downey Jr. movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Also, let’s not forget that this does two things. After all, we’re the ones who took something as dramatic and grand as La Vie d’Adèle and filled it with so much seduction that we ended up calling it Blue Is the Warmest Color, which sounds like what Nicole Kidman might whisper in a mysterious perfume commercial. And the 1998 Swedish romcom I’ll Show You Love sounds like a classic, until you realize it had a very interesting title in Fucking Åmål.

However, for now let’s celebrate this for what it is. In order for The Devil Must Wear Prada to get enough money for a sequel, let’s do the right thing and call it The Woman Who Loves Luxury 3. At least we’ll all know where we stand with it.