Movie Review - Don't Worry Darling

Director: Olivia Wilde
Genre: Drama/ Thriller
Runtime: 123 minutes
Year: 2022
Starring: Florence Pugh, Olivia Wilde, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Kiki Layne, Gemma Chan, Nick Kroll
 
Description: A 1950s housewife (Florence Pugh) living with her husband (Harry Styles) in an utopian experimental community begins to worry that his glamorous company could be hiding disturbing secrets.

Review: Almost nothing more iconic than the suburb of an American city in the 1950s. industrious housewives wave their husbands off each morning as they head off to work in their shiny cars. In the evening, a sumptuous meal is on the table. During the day, the women gossip and chat, in between cleaning their houses, ballet class and taking care of the children. the American dream in a nutshell, but we all know the dark side.

The perfect families, always smiling, never troubles and always neat and tidy. The families who have moved into the suburbs of the thriller “Don’t Worry Darling” van flawlessly go along with the ideal image. What exactly their husbands do in the Californian desert is a mystery to the wives, but they aren’t allowed to ask either. The families are part of the utopian Victory project, started by their employer who also lives in this neighborhood. Jack and his wife Alice are one of the couples. Their perfect life is in danger when Alice does the very thing she is not supposed to do: ask questions.

The second directorial project for Olivia Wilde, who also has a supporting role, had quite a few issues. After Wilde’s debut movie, studios fought over het next project. The casting was anything but flawless: Shia LeBeouf was fired after misconduct and apparently Wilde did not get along with leading lady Florence Pugh. None of this shows. For a long time, this suspenseful drama is driven by a pleasant sense of alienation and mystery. It all begins after Alice makes a curious observation in the desert and goes to investigate. And why is the neighbor behaving so hysterically?

Then there is the benefactor of the project who is bursting with charm and charisma but in the meantime wants to control everything. Wilde plays the entrenched image od the American middle class in the 1950s complete with its attendant gender roles. No man van excel without a woman by his side. That the latter must above all meekly keep her mouth shut and follow order in an environment of narrow-mindedness is conveniently omitted.

These circumstances combined with Alice’s curious nature are bound to cause problems. The unhappy housewife, who maintains a passionate relationship with her husband Jack, undergoes the usual patterns of her own disbelief, not being believed herself and facing opposition from those around her. We have seen this pattern passed by before, but it’s embedded in unusual circumstances and performed by a downright heroine whose resistance she experiences only makes her more combative.

That something is quite wrong in peaceful Victory is obvious, and along with Alice, the viewer sets out to investigate. The film is not at all predictable, even though you know something bad is going to happen.

Wilde directs tightly but vividly, with the bright colors of the 1950s and the sweltering desert heat becoming increasingly stifling.

Once unfolded, “Don’t Worry Darling” evokes a host of comparisons to other films, which I will not list to avoid spoilers. The excellent acting completes the picture. even former One Direction star Harry Styles does a fine job. Not genius, but certainly a refreshingly unconventional mindfuck.

Rating: 4/ 5

10s Movie Review - If Beale Street Could Talk

Director: Barry Jenkins
Genre: Drama/ Crime
Runtime: 120 minutes
Year: 2018
Starring: Kiki Layne, Stephan James, Regina King, Michael Beach, Bryan Tyree Henry, Pedro Pascal, Diego Luna, Ed Skrein

Description: A young woman (Kiki Layne) embraces her pregnancy while she and her family set out to prove her childhood friend and lover innocent of a crime he didn’t commit.

Review: The moment at the 2017 Oscar ceremony when “Moonlight” managed to walk away with the top prize after all is still vividly remembered by many film fans. The win means a dream start for the career of then still debutant director Barry Jenkins. It raised expectations for his next project, but with a breathtaking adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel “Is Beale Street Could Talks”,  Jenkins more than lived up to them.  
Baldwin’s novel describes the tragic romance of two young African-America lovers from Harlem. Nineteen-year-old Tish and twenty-four-year-old Fonny are head over heels in love with each other and ready to build a future together, but are suddenly brutally separated when the latter is unjustly detained on suspicion of a brutal rape. And as if that fact wasn’t wry enough, Tish also turns out to be pregnant. Whether the father will ever be able to see his child grow up outside prison, however, remains to be seen
Baldwin has a past as an activist. “If Beale Street Could Talk” contains the necessary social criticism of the unjust treatment of black citizens in the American legal system, which despite its setting in the 1970s still feels painfully relevant. On the other hand, a rock-hard indictment is not Jenkins’ film. Rather than a grueling legal drama, his film is primarily a tragic yet hopeful love story. Although the run-up to and repeated postponement of the trial may be the red line of the story on paper, the film regularly flutters back and forth between loving memories from the past and present.
This non-chronological structure immediately forms a nice stylistic break with Jenkin’s debut film “Moonlight”, which was neatly divided into three separate acts. The nice thins is that in some respects “If Beale Street Could Talk” is almost a direct counterpart to Jenkins’ predecessor, but in other respect it manages to further perfect his recognizable stamp as a director.
Starting with the chose color palette. Where “Moonlight” was characterized by many cool, blue tones, symbolic of the state of mind of its main character, “If Beale Street Could Talk” is full of warm autumn colors, with many shades of yellow, red and brown. The musical accompaniment by Nicholas Britell also fits in seamlessly.
What hasn’t changed is Jenkins’ tender and empathetic directorial style. This guarantees once again a number of eye-catching camera performances by his cinematographer James Laxtn. For example, the impressice overhead show with which the film opens. But it’s mainly the close-ups that make the biggest impression. Using a number of clever tricks, such as slowing down time or zooming in on small details of someone’s face. Here he created intimacy. By of the having his characters look straight into the camera without saying anything, Jenkins regularly treat you to a kind of lifelike mini-portrait. It feels almost as if the person on the screen is sitting right across from you.
Extra clever is that Jenkins also succeeds effortlessly, without dialogue, in allowing the viewer to empathize with the emotional world of his characters. Jenkins is able to translate the story on paper into visual language in an extraordinary way without having to lose any of its power.
Just as effortlessly, “If Beale Street Could Talk” captures viewers with the sincere love of Tish and Fonny. So much so, that at times you would almost forget what a desperate premise the film opens with. The injustice stings, but at the same time Jenkins’ portrait remains as hopeful as it is heartbreaking, showing that love can survive even the most difficult obstacles.

Rating: 4,5 / 5