WIDOWS - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Opening Night Gala

In the early 1980s the soon to be celebrated thriller writer Lynda La Plante created a British TV miniseries called WIDOWS. It was about a group of women who decide to carry out the heist that their late husbands planned, rather than succumb to pressure from the police, and a rival gang, to turn over the late mastermind's book of secrets. All along their secret weapon is that everybody underestimates them. No-one conceives that a bunch of housewives could pull this off. Apparently this tale of under-estimation and prejudice spoke to a young London schoolboy called Steve McQueen and 35 years later the now acclaimed director (12 YEARS A SLAVE) has recreated the heist film but bringing his own brand of art-house style, deep emotional contemplation and political provocation to it.  I loved many elements of this reworking - particularly its visual style and its strong central performance from Viola Davis (THE HELP).  But I found the contemplative pace undermined the thriller, and the politics, while valid, was extremely heavy-handed. Overall, the film was a disappointment, and my least favourite of his films to date.

Let's talk about what's great first.  This is a film with a beautiful visual style and sensitivity - whether in its eye for detail and location, or in the way the camera is positioned and used. Speaking to the former, McQueen really immerses himself in the diversity of life in contemporary Chicago - whether the stunning laeshore apartment of Viola Davis' Veronica and her late husband Harry (Liam Neeson) - filled with beautiful objet d'art and stylish furniture - or the overcrowded warm-hued hair salon that the heist driver Belle (Cynthia Erivo) works at. Early on there's a tour-de-force scene inter-cutting the various gang members' funerals that beautifully shows the different churches and traditions of mourning. This is a film profoundly concerned with architecture.  One of the most impressive scenes that highlights this is one in which Colin Farrell's corrupt politician drives from the impoverished ward in which he's campaigning to his swanky town house. The camera stays outside the car rather than on the people conversing within it. We don't know why until it pulls up at the town house - and then we realise that we have been seeing a short journey from poverty to wealth, and that McQueen is wearing a particular point about the plebs and the elite.  Time and again we're treated to moments like this - when the camera angle or movement is just doing something subtle and above and beyond the standard direction. Or even a final scene in a cafe with mirrored pillars, where we see both Veronica and Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) reflected in pillars looking away from each other. 

Now here's where the film doesn't quite work. It's being marketed as a heist but it's not really interested in that. It's really a contemplative piece about mourning and female self-empowerment and a political commentary on corruption, racial and gender prejudice. The first theme allows us to see some superb acting from Viola Davis but substantially weighs on the pace of the film. I didn't mind too much because I knew I was watching a McQueen film and expected something more slow-paced but I was wondering how mainstream audiences might react. I also think the film is rather unbalanced. Viola Davis just blows us away.  But Michelle Rodriguez is remarkably anonymous as her fellow widow - Elizabeth Debicki looks like wounded Bambi and has a rather heavy-handed and obvious journey to empowerment - in fact the only interesting woman other than Veronica is Belle. As for the men, I'll leave it to you to judge whether you believe Harry's motivation. The other gang members are anonymous.  The opposition gang is ludicrously drawn - Daniel Kaluuya's gangster jumps the shark repeatedly.  The only real interest for me came from Colin Farrell's politician and a hilariously angry cameo from Robert Duvall as his father. 

Finally, let's speak to politics. I get it. These are angry times.  But do we really need something as on the nose as a cop gunning down a black kid with no provocation as a major plot motivator, while Obama Hope posters flutter in the background?  Do we really need basically the entire Alice/Debicki arc?  I don't decry being political but let's have some more sophistication about how we do it. For instance, I could argue that just have Viola Davis on screen with her natural hair - just having the movie open with a passionate inter-racial kiss - just being able to show even-handed corruption between the black church and the white alderman - is politically provocative and far more interesting.

WIDOWS will be released in the UK on November 9th and in the USA on November 16th.

DARK PLACES

On the back of the wild success of GONE GIRL and now the new TV miniseries SHARP OBJECTS, I was compelled to read Gillian Flynn's middle book - Dark Places - and was surprised to find that it had also received a big screen adaptation. I was even more surprised when I realised it had a stellar cast of big names, because it's release had utterly passed me by. Upon further investigation I realised that it had been horribly reviewed and went straight to video. Nonetheless, it's now available on a lot of pay per view streaming services so I decided to check it out. 

The plot of the film is remarkably faithful to the book which has - admittedly - a highly cinematic structure.  As with SHARP OBJECTS we open in the present day with a survivor of childhood trauma who will be our heroine. She's also falling apart - desperate for money, deeply emotionally scarred, self-medicating.  As with SO, she's sent back into her past to investigate a crime, except this time rather than being a journalist she's paid by a weird crime club of enthusiasts who believe that the testimony she gave as a child to convict her brother of murdering her mother and sisters was co-erced and that a grave injustice has been done.  And so the movie / book proceed by alternating scenes / chapters between the present day investigation and flashbacks to the day of the crime, culminating in a big reveal.

The plot is satisfyingly tricksy and gnarly and riffs off familiar topics from the WEST MEMPHIS THREE case - accusations of satan worship and child molestation. But as with all SO, I've come to believe that the point of Gillian Flynn's fiction is not so much whodunnit - it's perfectly possible to enjoy it having guessed that - but exploring the margins of American life - the people left behind by globalisation, suffering under bad debt and addiction, living from pay cheque to pay cheque and falling apart. It's this social observation of post financial crisis America that makes for compelling reading. That, and Flynn's eye for the grotesque - the stink and sounds and horror of life that other authors choose to avoid. She is a deeply visually impressive author.

And that's really the problem with this plot-faithful but atmosphere-blind adaptation. The director and production designers and costume designers just won't let it go grungy enough. Charlize Theron is also horribly miscast - this stunningly beautiful amazonian woman just doesn't look malnourished, maladjusted and on the poverty line. Her childhood just isn't dirty and shambolic enough.  Christina Hendricks admittedly does better at looking beaten down as her mother, but she has to look truly broken - a woman who would resort to the desperate - and she doesn't. The only people who really look perfect are Chloe Grace Moretz as the vampy teen girlfriend of the convicted man, and Drea De Matteo as a washed up stripper.  Otherwise this entire film just isn't gritty, grimy and grungy enough - and contrasts poorly with the production design and slippery memories of SHARP OBJECTS. 

DARK PLACE has a running time of 113 minutes and is rated R. It went straight to video in 2015.