Don’t Worry Darling (2022, dir. Olivia Wilde, US) by Kymm Zuckert
“What is the opposite of progress?”
“Chaos.”
Some months ago, the trailer for Don’t Worry Darling played before a movie I was seeing, and I leaned over to Blake and whispered, “This is the trailer where Olivia Wilde was served papers from Jason Sudeikis before it showed at a festival!“ So basically, things having nothing to do with the movie have been overshadowing this movie since the very moment it became public.
How do you even judge a film when all you can think about while watching the film is all of the things that happened during the publicity of the film? Also, would the judgment be so nasty if the director wasn’t a woman? I’m pretty sure that if it was a male director who started up a relationship with a female actor during the shooting of a film, nobody would’ve given two hoots. A sex scandal involving a woman who is in a position of power with a younger man? A female director and a female actor not getting along? That gets ugly very quickly, even when said director was everyone’s darling after the much beloved Booksmart.
All that said, even with the bad reviews, I pretty much liked it! I am extremely annoyed, though, that I was spoiled on a very important piece of the mystery by listening to a specifically non-spoilery podcast review. Pop Culture Happy Hour, one of my faves, said something in a very particular way, that made something so clear, I thought it must have been revealed at the beginning of the film, but nope! It was a big fat twist that was wrecked for me, and I will be resenting that for a long time, believe you me, Pop Culture Happy Hour.
So, Jack (Harry Styles) and Alice (Florence Pugh) are the perfect couple, living in the perfect town, with the perfect lives. They live in a town called Victory, where the men go off to work in their fabulous, shiny cars, and the women stay home and clear their lovely houses, then go to ballet class and shopping, where they get everything for free.
Everyone drinks and parties a lot, and has lots of HottSexx (tm) on the kitchen table, etc, and everything seems entirely swell, but Alice starts to feel like maybe there is something going on under the surface. What is Victory hiding? What do the men do all day? And what is up with Frank (Chris Pine), the leader of the town, whom the men all idolize, but who seems super sketch.
Now, when you see as many trailers as I do, going to the movies every week, sometimes you see a trailer more than you should, and I saw this one a lot. It was a really good trailer, it made me want to see the movie, but it also had every arresting image of the film in it, which was unfortunate.
I liked the film, I found it interesting and intriguing, and really enjoyed the performances, especially Florence Pugh, who is such a star, and gives such a committed performance, she grounds the entire project with her eyes alone. Also Nick Kroll, in a smaller role as one of the husbands, I could barely take my eyes off of. I don’t know why, but he just drew my attention whenever he was onscreen.
But I wonder what it would have been like to watch this not knowing about the offstage drama, not having seen the trailer, and not having been spoiled while being promised no spoilers? Maybe this is a film to watch in a decade, when no-one will remember any nonsense about spitting and Shia LaBeouf, and it can just be appreciated for what it is, a creepy little mystery with some arresting visuals and very good performances.
Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog