Review Alice, Darling – Review on FilmTotaal
Director: Maria Nighy | Script: Alanna Francis, Mark Van deVen | Cast: Anna Kendrick (Alice), Wunmi Mosaku (Sophie), Kaniehtiio Horn (Tess), Charlie Carrick (Simon), air | Time to play: 89 minutes | Year: 2022
“At least it’s not physical abuse,” people often downplay when their partner verbally crosses the line. Followed by “at least this doesn’t always happen” when the physical abuse still occurs. Sometimes it is extremely difficult to recognize in time that something is really not right in a relationship. well that Alice honey shows that bruises are not needed to label a partner as aggressive.
Alice can never be out of the house for long, getting nervous when she can’t reply to her boyfriend’s messages fast enough and pulling her hair; Alice is not well. That becomes very clear when her two best friends take her away for a week. When one of them hides Alice’s phone, she gently begins to learn that life is more enjoyable without a man who constantly criticizes her. But she also prevents him from reaching her, which makes her very nervous.
During initial promotional interviews, lead actress Anna Kendrick (Pitch perfect, In the air) that this was a very personal project for her, as she herself has been in a similar relationship in the past. Something like that doesn’t explode the first day, she sneaks in. Seemingly romantic comments about wanting to be together become more convincing and eventually turn into a control obsessive. Praise gives way to criticism and insults.
Alice honey it shows very little of that, and that’s a strong choice. The focus is on Alice, who is away from her boyfriend most of the time. From time to time, short images of her flashing through her mind, how he makes a nasty comment about her personality, or how everything is always her fault. When she is there, she is a threatening presence with her physical and intense gaze.
It’s very understandable that Alice fell for this man before he showed his true colors and destroyed her self-confidence to the point that leaving is not an option. This is your greatest strength Alice honey. The movie doesn’t chastise Alice by saying that she should have stood up for herself and realized the abuse of her.
There are also less strong points. The chosen style puts the film in the arthouse category, with shots of an insect, a pensive Alice on a pier, and a squirrel behind a window. These are standard images that an uninspired director presents to convince viewers that this is a quality film.
Unfortunately, they are meaningless random images. Then show Alice who looks at the squirrel from behind the window and can smile again at something for a long time. Or at that moment hear the nasty voice of her boyfriend say that she can’t appreciate anything. The bar for drama should be higher than this.
Finally, Alice’s boyfriend shows up at her cabin. Not much happens, but it’s still exciting; Will this man hurt her and her girlfriends? In addition to being a creep, there’s also a subplot about a missing girl in the town where they’re staying. There’s never a full explanation for this, but given the context of the movie and the fact that it’s always like that, it’s obvious that a man is responsible for this.
The style also gets in the way of the finale: a confrontation that sparks sparks wouldn’t be appropriate, but it would have been nice. Instead, it stops after a brief summary. Too bad, because a deeper dig could have been very interesting. The theme is psychological abuse and how women fall in love with a man like that and still stay with him. The movie should have paid more attention to it.
The whole is a smooth elaboration of an important theme. The playing time of just under an hour and a half proves that you dare not elaborate. Still, it could have been, it could have been a little more painful. It is still a movie, after all, a world where reality can be bigger than reality.