Alice, Darling film review: Anna Kendrick paints an affecting portrait of emotional abuse
Director Mary Nighy does great things with Anna Kendrick in Alice, Darling,despite a clichéd script
Film Reviews Darling
Alice, Darling’s Simon Lowe (Charlie Carrick) has the body of an athlete, the charm of a salesman, and the English-accented, rarely raised voice of a romance-novel-ready sensitive guy. He’d never hit a woman, or force himself on one in the manner one associates with physical assault. Yet he’s an abuser nonetheless, and perhaps a more insidious one than the kind of openly violent lout whose offenses are overt. He never beats the body, but he batters down self-esteem and manipulates empathy, leaving his girlfriend Alice (Anna Kendrick) so emotionally destroyed that he doesn’t have to say or do anything; the fear of how he might react is enough to keep her on edge forever.
Like a constant gardener, Alice must tend to Simon’s neediness around the clock. Heaven forbid she not respond to a text, or regularly send him a cleavage selfie for reassurance that she still wants him and still stays in starvation-shape for him. Ignore his neediness, and he’ll convince her she’s the abuser, failing to support him and deliberately sabotaging his life. She hurts her own body worse than he ever would, wrapping hair tightly around her fingers till they bleed. And there’s a real question of what free will she has to say no to anything, from sex on down.
While the marketing sends mixed messages, this is not just a narrative of suffering. Most of it concerns Alice’s attempt to escape, if only for a while, on a vacation with pals Sophie (Wunmi Mosaku) and Tess (Kaniehtiio Horn) to celebrate the latter’s birthday. Knowing full well that a girls-only trip won’t fly with Simon, who’ll angrily claim she’s choosing friends over him, she lies and tells him it’s a business trip, a position she can better defend against his arguments without emotional investment. But it’s only a matter of time before he finds out, and in the meantime, will Sophie and Tess realize what’s going on with their friend?
Anyone who’s known abuse victims would pick up on what Alice is sending out, even without foreknowledge of her story. She makes excuses, she tries to back out of everything, and when called on any of it, forcefully makes grand gestures of overcompensation, like suddenly and visibly stuffing her face to “prove” that she’s not forced to be on a punitive diet. It’s easy to see why some involved thought Alice, Darling was worth a one-week, awards-qualifying screening to see if Kendrick could score nominations. The acting is solid across the board, with Mosaku and Horn making the stalwart friends far from perfect, even a little needy in their own ways, and Carrick occasionally revealing the deep insecurity that fuels his terrible behavior—after a grand opening of his art show, he rages that “nobody” showed up, because the sizable crowd didn’t include the important people whose approval he was craving.
One might expect great work with actors from director Mary Nighy, whose father Bill is himself an awards favorite this year. Unfortunately, Alanna Francis’ script is overloaded with clichés that could easily deter awards voters. Character named Alice to denote that she has fallen down a metaphorical rabbit hole? Check. Footage of her swimming underwater, suggesting she’s psychologically drowning? As predictable as the eventual, inevitable follow-up of her emerging from the water to symbolize rebirth. Female friends singing loudly along to the car radio to blow off steam? Yep. Faces reflected in the light of fireworks to indicate a moment of spontaneous joy? You know it. All that’s missing is a montage of trying on different outfits, but editor Gareth C. Scales doesn’t seem like the type who’s down for that—he’s more expert at showing us how Simon manifests in Alice’s head at all times, even when he’s nowhere nearby.
To the extent that the movie is a thriller, it pulls that aspect into the final act, when Simon shows up in person again, pushing his luck by being himself in front of Alice’s friends. It’s only then that everything comes together, making Alice, Darling feel like a sort of emotional revenge flick. If you’re going to put an audience (via the main character) through the wringer, the catharsis had better be worth it. Earlier in the film, Nighy introduces a subplot about a local missing girl that’s meant to awaken Alice to parallels with herself; it never really amounts to much, but the suspenseful elements featuring Simon absolutely do.
As a frequent director of TV and of shorts, but a first-time feature helmer, Nighy feels like she’s finding her way in a new format. She’s got the hard part down, pulling off effective emotional beats even when the story seems to be operating on screenwriting 101 paradigms. All that remains is to find a script that’s up to the rest of it.
(Alice, Darling opens nationwide on January 20.)
53 Comments
I’ll watch Anna Kendrick try on outfits.
The headline made me hope this was a film where Kendrick was the abuser. Now that would be a heck of a role for her.
With a slowed down version of “When I’m Gone,” featuring ominous cup stacking.
I’ve got a ticket for the long way round.*Aaron Taylor-Johnson running frantically through a redwood forest* had cut *someone building a pyramid of solo cups*
Two bottles of whisky for the way*Anna Kendrick packing for a trip, or is she, what is she packing in there, is that a gun?*
And I sure would like some sweet company
*Aaron sitting on a park bench, head in hands. Focus shifts to behind him. Anna is standing on the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Staring at him hard. Hard cut to a super fun looking bar party, both of them are having a great time. Hard cut to Anna texting Aaron “Hey, what are you up to?” he is in a bathtub. She is standing on his front lawn*
And I’m leaving tomorrow*Annas hand ripping duct tape* cut to *smashing pyramid of stacked solo cups*
What do you say?
*Zoom out from a cabin in the woods, looks like the Evil Dead cabin after a trip through a HGTV fixer upper show, while zooming out we here Aaron screaming, trying to escape from a chained up foot locker or something*
When I’m Gone, in theaters only, August 2024
Have you seen Camp?
I’d watch a movie called Don’t Worry Alice Darling, in which Florence Pugh and Anna Kendrick gaslight each other for two hours.
On the kitchen table?
Now that… could be interesting, and not just because of the visual interest in the actresses.
.. in which Florence Pugh and Anna Kendrick gaslight scissor each other for two hours.
Scissor me, Daddy Ass!!!!
Easy there, Vin Diesel.
man, if that one ever stops being funny I’ll know part of me has died.
I wish there was more content that was not about domestic violence and abuse. As a victim of both child and relationship domestic abuse there is a lot of content out there with those as either the main plot or the majority of the story.
That’s true, but I think the public has a hard time grasping emotional abuse in relationships, and always blame the woman as being part of a toxic relationship. These movies are still important, but I agree we don’t often see a nuanced story of parent-child (or adult child) emotional abuse.
And movies and tv shows that have the man as the victim of domestic abuse of all kinds just do not exist. Men are shown as always the abusers, never the victims.
Which is doubly unfortunate given that – as I’m sure you’re aware of given your history – there’s pretty good evidence that cishet men suffer emotional abuse at the hands of women significantly higher than the reverse.On the other hand, if I’m a studio exec deciding whether to greenlight a script that shows abuse of men, all I’d have to do to reject it would be to look at the wildly bifurcated reaction to Gone Girl, where a very significant part of the feedback from women audiences was that they felt that Affleck’s character deserved everything he got and more from Amazing Amy. If that’s your potential pool of ticket buyers or stream viewers, it’s sadly very hard to see where you’re going to get an audience for it.
I know there is no market for it. I just know that I and friends do our best to avoid media that centers on or fetishizes abuse.
Isn’t Elisabeth Moss’s whole career centered on fetishizing abuse?
How did you take Gone Girl that literal? Amazing Amy was literally built off male fantasy tropes until the other shoe drops, that’s the fucking point. ya’ll incels banding together, but you both gotta just stay on reddit.
dang you really missed the point of Gone Girl, Amazing Amy is a male fantasy until the other shoe drops. There is a lot of satire in the book and movie, especially since it’s in the true crime genre. that’s the whole point.
How ironic that a troll who labels abuse victims incels because they’re cishet males and had their reported post dismissed now comes back to claim their insight is worth listening to. Hope there’s a community out there that helps you.Bye.
Calling bullshit on the claim that men suffer significantly more emotional abuse from women than the other way around. There is certainly work to be done in addressing abused men and reducing the social stigma, and women can definitely be toxic and emotionally abusive to male partners, but your claim just does not seem possible considering the course of history and power structures throughout the world. Abuse can often be enabled by institutional power imbalances, which tend to disproportionately favor men over women, e.g. property ownership laws, education access, stricter moral standards on what women can and can’t do. I also can’t tell if you’re trying to separate out emotional abuse from physical and sexual abuse. If you are, it’s not like emotional abuse doesn’t happen in relationships where the other forms of abuse are happening.
I’ll let you google it, but the latest CDC piece has emotional abuse of men at slightly higher rates than that of women – and given your concern with abuse, I’m sure you’re aware that the massive societal shame in reporting or discussing abuse among men probably skews that higher; that you’re essentially doing something very similar to that in your reply is something you may want to think about. Previous studies showed significantly higher gaps, which again I’ll let you track down. Either way, it doesn’t really lend credence to your structural argument being the miracle shield for men you seem to think it is, and perhaps you should pay more attention the next time a cishet male friend tries to talk to you about that. That parity also isn’t remotely reflected on screen, which also seems to be a point that may need some consideration.
First, I typically don’t like these kinds of comparisons because I don’t want it to veer towards discounting the experiences of the group that is reportedly “less oppressed” and sidetrack the discussion of how to address the larger issue. It’s fucked up regardless of the relative numbers. But I wasn’t the one that brought it up.My issue was with the claim that men experience “significantly higher” emotional abuse than women. Can you provide link(s) for these studies you mention? All I could find on the CDC website was, “Over 61 million women and 53 million men have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime.” In googling, I found one study among college students that found “being female” as a significant predictor of emotional abuse (could only read the abstract) and another among primarily college students that found men reported a higher rate of emotional abuse, but women experienced more isolation and property damage. The introduction for the latter paper also brings up multiple studies that found comparable rates of emotional abuse among men and women, but none where it was significantly higher for men. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3876290/Both these studies used a small sample size of mostly college aged students in the United States in the last ten years. Again, there’s the rest of the world and history to consider if we’re making this comparison. Again, I also wonder if this comparison considers the emotional abuse that typically co-occurs with physical/sexual abuse, and the difficulty in separating them discretely.
This. It’s just a very transparent attempt to level the playing field
What a twist!
I mean, movies in 2023 are not really the medium for nuance.
Not even the promise of Anna Kendrick taking a “cleavage selfie” is enough to convince me to watch this movie.
I’m afraid they have me there. I’m kinda easy that way.
I could send you some links, but I might get kicked out of here.
Thanks for the offer, but don’t worry. 🙂
Adam Scott is a very versatile actor. He should be on his way to win an EGOT.
Kaniehtiio Horn is so great as the Deer Woman on Reservation Dogs. The Deer Woman would not put up with this crap
sup pink dicks?
Nor would Auntie Tanis.
You don’t even want to know what her Mohawk character would do.
How’re ya now?
Hmmmm. Has she tried smiling more?
Anna Kendrick is a god damn national treasure.
Agreed. She apparently just filmed an episode of Hot Ones a couple of days ago and I can’t wait.
Wouldnt, by default, she be deemed the hot one?
I mean, unless Julianne Moore can drag herself to be a little more prettier.
eww, that husk, hard pass.
Bosom Barrier.
I’d watch that!
So…she ends up beating the guy, right? That’s the only way I could ever imagine watching this.
And then she beat off the old man with a stick. No, wait, there wasn’t a stick.
Wait, are we mad at Mary Nighy because she’s a nepo baby, and therefore boycotting this? Wouldn’t want to accidentally see something the Internet doesn’t think I should see.
Freddie Prinze Jr. is a very talented voice actor.
Not even the amazing sexual allure of Anna can get me to watch this.
Fuck this comment section to hell. Bunch of limpdick assholes.