The first words of the person who welcomes us to Hollywood is already a clear indication of the dreamlike atmosphere that we will encounter in Pretty Woman (Marshall 1990): "Welcome to Hollywood! Everybody comes to Hollywood got a dream. What's your dream?" It is only the prelude to the romance that develops between the two protagonists Vivian Ward and Edward Lewis within a film world where it seems possible to satisfy desires and actually make dreams come true. What emerges is the representation of a new American dream, which is perhaps a corny, second-hand fairy tale, but which, judging by the film's enduring popularity, seems perfectly able to capture filmgoers' imagination. A Ricœurian hermeneutics working on the film world of Pretty Woman uncovers three major symbolic keys of interpretation—the romcom, Cinderella and the Pygmalion myth—which together give expression to a problematic and contradictory philosophy.