MOVIE REVIEW: Anna Kendrick is crushingly brilliant as a woman in an abusive relationship.
It begins with thread wrapped around a finger, wrapped so tight that it cuts into flesh, the flesh of Alice, a slender, doll-like thirtysomething who looks a lot younger than she is, teenlike, chaste but coquettish, always clad in above-the-knee summer dresses. That doesn’t come easy: It takes effort, habit, ritual to stay exactly how Simon wants her.
It’s not often that a film seems impossible to consider without its lead actor, but the blurred line between Anna Kendrick and Alice is part of the quietly harrowing power of. Kendrick has spoken about being in exactly this kind of domineering, psychologically damaging, abusive relationship, and the heartbreaking introspection she brings to the titular character is extraordinary. But it’s also her physicality, not just her experiences.
, but that's almost the easy way to cast her. It's braver to embrace that there is negative space around her, like the yearning gaps between her Jill and Ron Livingston's Chris in Joe Swanberg's. Here, it’s the space that is constantly inhabited by her boyfriend, Simon , even when he is not actually there. It’s the constant texts and demands for texts, the knowledge that there will be accountability when she gets home.
The matter-of-fact delivery of that line is chilling, but pivotal in and indicative of how first-time feature director Mary Nighy brings life to the script by Alanna Francis and Mark Van de Ven . Nighy places the audience inside Alice’s experience, inside the warped logic that Simon has wrapped around her and forced her to fit into. At the same time, we are stood alongsidestar Horn as they try to unpack what’s happening with Alice.
In its often distressing, sometimes nauseating depiction of a woman caught in weaponized co-dependence,is rarely an easy watch. Yet it is always captivating, and that all comes back to Kendrick in what may well be her most powerful performance to date. It takes audiences deep into the experience of a traumatic relationship with compassion, understanding and well-placed anger, and yet leaves you with one wish for Alice: the space to breathe.
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