Review - Alice, Darling
Directed by: Mary Nighy
Written by: Allana Francis
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Wunmi Mosaku, Kaniehtiio Horn, Charlie Carrick
Running Time: 89 minutes
Rating: 4/5
In a brief but illuminating moment during the first act of Mary Nighy's Alice, Darling, the title character rehearses a phrase to herself while her boyfriend, Simon, gets coffee. Watching her "love" through the window, she repeats the same sentence in preparation for relaying this message to her partner. Judging from her quiet intensity, this is not only a ritual but something born out of necessity. If she doesn't prepare, she can't correctly gauge and control how Simon reacts. This is one of many unsettling examples throughout Nighy's film of how abuse changes the fabric of how you interact with your significant other, those around you, and even yourself.
Not so much a thriller as it is a psychological exorcism, Alice, Darling immediately lets you know that something is wrong with Alice's relationship with Simon. During dinner with her two best friends, Tess and Sophie, Alice takes a suggestive selfie in a bathroom stall, but her face deflates as she sends the photo to the man who's asked for it. For Alice, this typically sexy request from a partner feels like a demand. Later, when Tess invites both Sophie & Alice for a week-long birthday celebration by the lake, the world that Alice has meticulously constructed begins to crack. The phrase we see Alice rehearse is a lie she'll tell Simon about her absence — this will be a "work trip." Simply having fun with her friends is not an option.
As they leave the city, away from Simon and her sterile apartment, the trees start to open up, and the air changes. Suddenly, Alice is overcome with an urge to be sick. Her guarded interior stress is becoming exterior. As they settle in and the week takes shape, Alice has an even harder time keeping to herself just how much pain and confusion she's in regarding her relationship. Obsessive and controlling love can feel like the real thing; after all, as she puts it: Simon's also never been physical. But once the truth of Simon's manipulation has been exposed, Alice, Darling barrels toward an inevitability: Alice must either leave Simon or succumb to the rot placed inside her by the man who has taken hold of her life.
“Alice, Darling is a rare film that explores how violent emotional abuse can be to the body and soul. The threat of physicality is replaced with small verbal jabs, controlled manipulation, and pressure tactics that keep the victim always on edge, just out of their friends’ reach, and always unsure of how their partner will keep them in line.”
Alice, Darling is a rare film that explores how violent emotional abuse can be to the body and soul. The threat of physicality is replaced with small verbal jabs, controlled manipulation, and pressure tactics that keep the victim always on edge, just out of their friends' reach, and always unsure of how their partner will keep them in line. Allana Francis's script and Nighy's direction smartly show Alice's obsessive rituals — the phrase repetition, hair pulling — to illustrate what's going on inside. Individual interiority can be hard to express on screen, but it feels alive and truthful here.
With minimal but effective screen-time, Charlie Carrick's Simon is menacing yet charming, and Tess & Sophie, played with buoyancy and welcome humour by Kaniehtiio Horn and Wunmi Mosaku, respectively, are two friends you'd want in your corner. And then there's Alice, played with a fearful complexity by Anna Kendrick. Kendrick aptly weaponizes her quirky screen sensibility to shield the pain going on until it can no longer be covered up. Once the mirror's shattered, Kendrick plums the depths of emotional horror that we've never really seen from her before.
And while Alice, Darling explores the dynamics of abuse in the hetero sphere, it can't be overstated just how much this affects all different kinds of couples. Partner imbalance and emotional manipulation are not always beholden to one gender or one type of romantic "love." It can affect anyone who's ever opened their heart to another individual. The subject is often hard to talk about because there are no bruises or signs of harm, and Alice, Darling exhibits that scars on the inside are more challenging to spot than ones on the outside. But it ultimately offers hope that it is possible to relinquish the shame of the unspeakable, and the vicious controlling cycle — from your partner, from your own mind — can be broken.