Gone Girl [18]

Dir: David Fincher

Gone Girl is a contradictory piece of work: it's trashy and tawdry, pure pulp, but it's also classy; precisely crafted and looking to award season with a degree of expectation.  These are things that David Fincher has previously combined to brilliant (Se7en) and numbingly pointless (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) effect. Sadly Gone Girl, while it has more reason to exist than Fincher's last, ends up leaning more towards the latter.

Based on Gillian Flynn's novel, and adapted by Flynn herself, the setup of Gone Girl sees Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) vanish on her fifth wedding anniversary from the home she shares with her husband Nick (Ben Affleck).  As the investigation continues details emerge about Nick and Amy's lives and their marriage which throw suspicion on Nick.  That, of course, is only the premise, but to say much more would be to spoil the film for those, like myself, who come to it without having read the novel and that would be a shame because one of its undoubted strengths is the fact that the plot twists genuinely throw you for a loop.

There is, on the surface, much to recommend here.  As you might expect of a craftsman as assured as Fincher, the film looks impeccable.  There is a coldness to his eye here that renders suburbia something foreboding, visually and geographically removed from the grimier part of town where The Bar, which Nick owns with his twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon), is found.  Every frame is perfectly composed, reeking of design, and the camera movement follows suit.

Similarly there is little outwardly wrong with the performances.  Affleck does some of if not the best work of his career.  A TV interview late in the film is full of meaningful touches that resonate with scenes from right back to the start of the film.  Rosamund Pike, given a standout role as Amy, grabs hold of the part with both hands and owns every scene she's in.  As far back as her debut as a bad Bond girl in Die Another Day filmmakers have recognised Pike's icy quality and it seems perfect that she was once the lead in a play titled Hitchcock Blonde.  Fincher uses and manipulates those attributes in Pike to  striking effect.

Many of the film's best roles are for women and perennial supporting player Kim Dickens, as a thoughtful, methodical detective and Carrie Coon, in her first, potentially star making, film role as Margo; dragged into events simply by being related to Nick both give strong performances and are allowed to be more than just props to move the action along.  Perhaps the biggest surprise is Tyler Perry, regarded by people who aren't fans of his Madea films as at best and irritant and at worst an embarrassment, he here turns in a credible and authoritative dramatic performance as Nick's lawyer, Tanner Bolt.

And yet, as there is a dark underbelly to Nick and Amy's marriage there is a flipside to many of the virtues of Gone Girl.  It IS perfect looking, designed to within an inch of its life, and perhaps the coldness that that design gives the film is exactly what Fincher and his brilliant DP Jeff Cronenweth intended.  Still, I can't deny that it meant I could see them behind every shot, that the film held me at a distance, almost as if I was watching it being directed rather than watching the story unfold.  Surprising as the events of the story are, I found myself so aware of their assembly that I was never fully engaged with them.

The performances ARE largely excellent (though Patrick Fugit gets lost in the shuffle and Missi Pyle is too hammy as TV news reporter) but they all feel like performances.  This, again, may be down to the fact that I could always feel Fincher's hand driving the film, which, controlled as they are, I never have in his other works.  It's particularly true of Rosamund Pike.  Again there is perhaps intent in this; a sense that we're supposed to feel that Amy is always playing a role, but this is something that I've felt has been done better in a lot of previous Neo-Noir.  Pike is an actress I've long been a fan of, and she's clearly been directed to this performance, which is technically difficult to fault, but it's that very technicality that was the problem; I could always see the cogs turning, in a way I can't usually when I see her on screen.  It would be easier to say that this was just a choice about Nick and Amy's characters if the same feeling weren't present in most of the other performances.  I found it particularly forced with Neil Patrick Harris' character.  Perhaps Fincher is trying to externalise the idea that everyone has a hidden agenda, but it's just one more thing that kept me very aware I was watching a construct that I felt more and more removed from even as I admired its craft.

For its first two hours Gone Girl strains credulity progressively more and more, with a plot that hinges so completely on everything going exactly to plan and everyone behaving just as expected that it is always on the knife edge of seeming ridiculous, but it's only in the last 30 minutes or so that the balance falters and my suspension of disbelief went from strained to snapped.  Up to that point I just about believed that the main characters would behave as the narrative needs them to, but that stopped being true after the big twist that heralds the film's long coda.  This might be less of an issue if Gone Girl had been more embracing of its pulpiness from the outset, but amping up those elements feels an odd fit with the prevailing tone of the film.

Watching Gone Girl I kept thinking of John Dahl's great film The Last Seduction, which is as pulpy as any 90's neo-noir and has many elements that echo here, including that cold tone.  For me Dahl marshals and combines those elements much better, into a film I am much more absorbed by.  David Fincher and his cast and crew are exceptional craftsmen, but the more I think about it the more my experience of Gone Girl is one of watching them build a beautiful empty vessel.
★★

This Week I've Been Watching... March 31st - April 6th 2014

Jerichow

Dir: Christian Petzold

I find director Christian Petzold to be one of the most hit and miss filmmakers around.  His work can be alienating; cold and airless in both emotional and visual register, but I keep returning to his films for one reason; his muse, Nina Hoss.

This film, from 2008, is one of Petzold's best and a riff on one of his favourite stories; The Postman Always Rings Twice (which I know only from one distant viewing of the Nicholson film).  Benno Fürmann plays Thomas an unemployed man in debt who lucks into a job driving for local businessman Ali (Hilmi Sözer) and ends up falling into an affair with Laura (Hoss), the young wife of his new boss.  Petzold takes the themes and some of style of noir.  For instance, a shot of Thomas emerging from the darkness to caress Laura, then disappearing when Ali might see him is noir through and through.  However, much of the film is less traditionally noirish; those themes sit under the drama, bubbling away as Ali and Thomas become friends.  This is a good touch, maintaining tension but also giving the film a feel that is different to much neo-noir.

Petzold's camerawork is typically austere, allowing the natural tension of the situation and the down to earth performances to do most of the work.  Fürmann and Hoss have worked together several times and they bounce off each other well here; there is an intensity to their sudden chemistry that convinces and the gaze between them, right from the first time they see each other, is riveting.  Overall Jerichow is a strong and suspenseful low key thriller, recommended for its excellent trio of central performances.

★★★★

Next Door
Dir: Pål Sletaune

A couple of years ago I saw and enjoyed director Pål Sletaune's Babycall.  It had a tiny UK release, but nevertheless was, for the most part, a tense little thriller.  This earlier film has much the same mix of elements and also stars the great Norwegian actor Kristoffer Joner.

Joner plays John.  On the day that his girlfriend has left him he meets his strange neighbours, Anne and Kim (Cecilie Mosli and Julia Schacht), who may be sisters.  John is drawn into their apartment when he is asked to help them move a cabinet.  The women try to keep John in their apartment, ultimately resulting in a violent sexual encounter with Kim and from here John's life seemingly begins to unravel.

From the start Sletaune creates an unsettling tone, giving us the feeling, especially once John enters the women's TARDIS-like apartment, that something is off and that we may not be getting all the information.  The answer is obvious quite early on, but that doesn't undermine the tension quite the way you would imagine.  That this is the case is down to the excellent central performances.  Kristoffer Joner has a blue collar feel to him; he's not quite leading man handsome, and when he's as thin as he is here he has a naturally haunted look about him, which in this case works very well for John.  He's a character in whose company you are never quite allowed to become comfortable, and for a while you can't pin down why.

More outwardly menacing, but equally effective, are Mosli and Schacht.  Both beautiful women, they acquire a siren-like quality as you realise that John really shouldn't be going near them, but sense how he is drawn back, over and over.  When the reality of the film becomes clear it morphs into a disturbing character study, and I suspect watching it knowing where it goes will change both the film and the performances.  At just 72 minutes it's a minor investment of time, and one worth making

★★★½