Red Dust
On a rubber plantation in French Indochina during the monsoon season, the plantation's owner/manager Dennis Carson (Gable), a prostitute named Vantine (Harlow), and Barbara Willis (Astor), the wife of an engineer named Gary Willis (Gene Raymond) are involved in a love triangle. Carson abandons an informal relationship with Vantine to pursue Barbara, but he has a change of heart and returns to Vantine.
Vantine arrives at the plantation first, on the lam from the authorities in Saigon. She displays an easy comfort in the plantation's harsh environment, wisecracks continually, and begins playfully teasing Carson as soon as she meets him. He resists her charm at first, but soon gives in, and they quickly develop a friendly, casual relationship in which they tease each other and pretend to be too tough for affection. One of their favorite games is to call each other "Fred" and "Lily", as though neither can be bothered to remember the other's name.
However, Carson loses interest in Vantine when the Willises arrive. Gary Willis is a young, inexperienced engineer, and his wife Barbara is a classy, ladylike beauty. Carson is immediately attracted to Barbara, and, after sending Gary on a lengthy surveying trip, he spends the next week seducing Barbara as Vantine watches jealously. He successfully persuades Barbara to leave Gary for him but recants after visiting Gary in the swamp and learning how deeply he loves Barbara. Carson has also seen that Barbara is unsuited for the primitive conditions on the plantation, as is Gary, and he has a painful memory of his own mother's death on the plantation when he was a boy. He decides to send both of them back to more civilized surroundings.
At the story's climax, Carson turns Barbara's feelings against himself by pretending that he never loved her, at which point she shoots him. This provides a cover for Vantine and Carson to save Barbara's marriage and reputation by insisting to Gary that Barbara rejected Carson's advances. The film ends after Carson has sent the Willises away, with Vantine reading bedtime stories to him as he recuperates from the gunshot wound, and he playfully tries to fondle her.
romantic