Pretty in Pink sees the return of Molly Ringwald as a young woman caught between potential suitors and faced with the crisis of a school dance. But Hughes’ second iteration of these well-worn tropes in just a few short years shows the range of narratives the filmmaker could wrangle from the everyday travails of teenage life.
This time around, his characters have greater agency, the dual pressures of schoolyard politics and class snobbery are more acutely felt and even the adults get more of a look-in, with the perennially crestfallen Harry Dean Stanton making an appearance as Ringwald’s down-on-his-luck father.