Alice, Darling
Bill Nighy’s daughter makes her feature directorial debut with a totally persuasive female view of male dominance.
Wunmi Mosaku, Anna Kendrick and Kaniehtiio Horn
Anyone seeking a film with a marked feminine sensibility need look no further. Alice, Darling measures up to that on every level. The screenplay, her second to be filmed, is by Alanna Francis, while the director, Mary Nighy, the daughter of Bill Nighy, is making her first feature film following short pieces and work for television. The story they have chosen to tell concerns a man, Simon (Charlie Carrick), who may stop short of physically abusing his partner, Alice (Anna Kendrick, herself an executive producer of this film), but Alice, Darling is an all-out attack on men who dominate their partners and treat them as their inferiors. It is Kendrick’s Alice who is very much the central figure here, but her two best friends, Tess (Kaniehtiio Horn) and Sophia (Wunmi Mosaku) also feature prominently. Indeed, having once introduced us to the principal characters in a city setting where Simon, an artist, is holding an exhibition, the film abandons that location for the rest of its length and proceeds to depict the three women sharing a rural vacation, one set up in celebration of Tess having her 30th birthday. The fact that Alice has chosen to hide what she is doing from Simon – she claims to be taking a work trip – is an early indication of the extent of Simon's controlling ways. She is in love with him but goes out of her way to hide anything which might antagonise him.
Although Simon will turn up again later in the film (having discovered where she is, he arrives there to bring her back), Alice, Darling sees everything through the eyes of the women. Indeed, it traces with subtlety the tensions that can arise when women who are anxious for the situation of a best friend try to alert her to their concerns only to find that she can turn resentful because she is in denial about what is happening to her. Because the focus is on the conflict within Alice’s own head and because the viewer is hoping throughout the film that she will come to acknowledge the extent to which she is being imposed upon, Alice is always the key figure. Nevertheless, the portraits of Tess and Sophia are vividly and sympathetically realised and the film, firmly steering clear of melodrama, shows with conviction how Simon is trying to change Alice by making her subservient and turning her into the person that suits his ends. He is doing this even to the point of seeking to break the bond that she has established with Tess and Sophia.
This is a serious, sensitive film, and its tone is one to which Anna Kendrick commits herself absolutely. Horn and Mosaku are fine too, with Mosaku impressing here no less than she did recently in Call Jane. It's also the case that Carrick contributes to the tone by expressing Simon’s true character without overplaying the role. But, if quiet authenticity seems to be the keynote sought, certain aspects of Alice, Darling tend to work against that. Particularly in its first half one finds much abrupt editing and the inclusion of memory shots of Simon, even if intended to depict a half-buried unease in Alice's mind, disrupt the flow of the film. There is also the fact that it begins with underwater shots which have a symbolical air that does not really fit in (despite which the film’s conclusion chooses to return to this mode). Furthermore, for a full sense of authenticity it would be preferable to have a music score that took more time off and there are other issues too. In the background the film references a girl who has gone missing and scenes of the search for her are incorporated. By implication her fate is to be seen as another example of a woman victimised, but as a sub-plot it never really earns its place even if it does provide opportunities for exterior scenes and thus to limit the feeling of this being a work which plays out in a single interior setting. Even so and despite this appearing to be a screen original, the film’s concentration on its four leading characters does give the impression of a drama that could have been conceived as a stage work. The intentions behind Alice, Darling are admirable and the acting never lets it down, but nevertheless I found that it failed to hit home to the extent that it should have and which is possible even when a drama adopts a quiet tone. However, those who are drawn to this film by its female sensibility will welcome it and for those viewers able to identify with Alice and her friends from personal experience it may indeed carry that extra punch.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Anna Kendrick, Kaniehtiio Horn, Charlie Carrick, Wunmi Mosaku, Mark Winnick, Daniel Stolfi, Viviana Zarrillo.
Dir Mary Nighy, Pro Katie Bird Nolan, Lindsay Tapscott, Christina Piovesan and Noah Segal, Screenplay Alanna Francis, Ph Mike McLaughlin, Pro Des Jennifer Morden, Ed Gareth C. Scales, Music Owen Pallett, Costumes Marissa Schwartz.
Babe Nation Films/Elevation Pictures/Castelletto Films/Ontario Creates-Lionsgate UK.
90 mins. Canada/USA. 2022. US and UK Rel: 20 January 2023. Cert. 15.
