There’s something… refreshing about this movie, and I mean that in the worst way possible. Where other films usually take time for the flaws within to really present themselves, The Woman In The Window almost seems eager to get it all out in the open within the first five minutes. As Bruno Delbonnel’s camera work glides across the house of Amy Adams’ Anna, a child psychologist with agoraphobia, it lingers on a TV set playing a stuttering slideshow of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. With how much older cinema gets shown throughout, including a few more Hitchcock efforts, it gives this inexorable feeling that I’m watching the result of someone who’s been stuck inside for months with nothing but black-and-white flicks for company, and decided to write a screenplay because they need something, anything, to alleviate the cabin fever.
Of course, the actual genesis of this story is far more complicated than that, to the point where it could take up the bulk of this review all on its own (here’s a beat-by-beat breakdown of the author done by the New Yorker a couple years ago), but that impression still lingers regardless. Not that this is the first modern film to crib heavily from Rear Window, but this is a weirdly straight-forward example of such, as if it’s trying to pre-empt critics and general audiences pointing out such things. Then again, that ranks fairly low on my list of priorities with this particular flick. I am far less sceptical of a story being retold than I am of it being retold well. And to be brutally honest, this isn’t Rear Window. Or Disturbia. Or even Bart Of Darkness. This film wishes it could reach that level of genuine quality.
The writing is absolutely atrocious, there’s no other way to put it. Tracy Letts admittedly has some solid work under his belt between Bug and Killer Joe, and maybe it’s because he’s adapting someone else’s material this time around, but the dialogue here is not only embarrassing but ventures into genuinely vile territory. I don’t know who thought “People who attempt suicide lose the right to joke about it” was a piece of dialogue that was worth bringing to the big screen, but I’d kindly ask for them to get horse-whipped because that is one of the most fucked writing moments of any film I’ve ever seen, let alone among the 1000+ I’ve covered on here. It being delivered by Tracy himself as Anna’s psychiatrist also gives it this weird boastful quality, like he’s proud of keeping it from the source material and wants everyone to know it.
But for as much as the woeful approach to mental health and general psychiatry bothers me, giving Every Breath You Take competition for mainstream bullshittery in that department, it’s not as if the overall presentation could’ve made it look any better, as desperately as it tries. Director Joe Wright and Delbonnel attempt to bring out the iso-terror of Anna’s situation, but all the pseudo-psychedelic textures, editing, and lighting effects can’t cover up how it’s being dressed-up to miniscule effect. It’s quite surreal watching a film be this half-hearted about making the interior of a house feel like a prison, when that as reality has become commonplace over the last two years since this film’s initial release schedule.
There’s also the casting here, which varies from passable to “even you must’ve known this was a bad idea”. Amy Adams follows up her previous catastrofuck on Hillbilly Elegy with another film that doesn’t deserve the talent she brings to it, and everyone else is so in-step with each other in serving gasoline-drenched herring in every scene they’re in, sympathising with Anna’s position becomes inescapable only because there’s literally no other way for things to go. Gary Oldman, Wyatt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh are incredibly disappointing in how rote they all end up, but that’s nothing compared to what in the fuck happened with Julianne Moore. Not since Body Of Evidence has she been this awkward on-screen, sharply contrasting what I know she’s capable of, and much like with everyone else here, the psychological damage sewn into every ‘facet’ of the narrative here doesn’t excuse how out-of-sorts this all feels.
And just in terms of it being cut from the same cloth as Gone Girl and The Girl On The Train, where the thrills are boosted by the unreliable narrator to instil fear in what they might be capable of, it still fails because there’s no tension to be found here. It’s played so on-the-nose that, even when the details do surface about why Anna has confined herself to her home, everyone else being so cartoonishly against her never manages to work on that same level. It even gets to the point where discovering who is ultimately behind all of this is not only underwhelming, but certifies a lot of what I’ve been hearing about the original book in it being a rip-off of Jon Amiel’s Copycat. The sheer irony of that might be the only amusing aspect of this entire production.
Something in the back of my head tells me I should be outright
furious at this thing, if only for that mystifying line of dialogue (speaking
as a survivor, I am beyond contempt towards that kind of sentiment). But
ultimately, I am more embarrassed-by-proxy than anything else, as I’m
struggling to figure out who exactly thought this was worth putting together
and with these names attached to it. Joe Wright Fuchs up
psycho-thrillers here about as badly as Pan did with family-friendly fantasy, Tracy
Letts finds a new low in his screenplay work and gets dangerously close to my
shit list as a result, and the mismanagement of actors seems designed to fuel
another year of ‘Amy Adams snubbed by the Academy’ memes. As much as the Tony
Gilroy-penned reshoots, or the COVID shuffle, or even just Scott Rudin’s
human-trashbag involvement as producer, might explain how we ended up here, none
of that makes the mess excusable or (even more damning) watchable.
No comments:
Post a Comment