I have written extensively about wigs here before and not at all about Carey Mulligan–my first run in with her was in a Doctor Who episode, my very first episode from that series, The Weeping Angels, which I pretended to not be into at the time and then after we broke up, I ended up binge-watching three or four seasons of that show and god it was so good. I’m still really turned around because I think I jumped around from series to series and couldn’t really stomach David Tennant but Matt Smith was awesome and so I might’ve been following the current series while working through a backlog. What I’m trying to say is Carey Mulligan occupies a special place in my early adulthood, a simpler time, a kinder time, a time for young love and adaptations of organ snatcher dystopias and the like.
I’ve been avoiding reviews (NPR) of PYW (Vanity Fair) and the coverage of the redaction of reviews (Vanity Fair apology, as covered by NYT), mostly because the trailer for this movie was so compelling (did I mention the wig[s]?) and it capstoned a tremendous year for movies in this lane (Always Sometimes Never, The Assistant?), but still had some elements that made it feel punchy and pulpy. The trailer’s dialogue measures in, as Eley Williams put it recently in The Liar’s Dictionary, at somewhere around 3.0-4.0 on the pH scale, wry, sardonic, rolling its eyes so far back in its head at the lazy excuses offered to protect comfortable men from consequences. In some ways, I think the trailer fatigue of this movie diminishes the effect of the twist. There are samples from almost every major scene in the movie that take the most biting lines, leaving Mulligan with little that feels fresh.
Even as I say that though, there are things about her performance that ought to put her in contention for a best actor award: her surprisingly cruelty, her physical comedy as she starfishes and corpses through her weekly ruses. “The movie tries hard,” on this point, Wife says, “to not let us fall too much into a rut of replaying the same scene over and over again by starting it off at different phases in the operation.” First we get to see her at the club and in the next scene, we skip the club straight for the apartment. By my count we have three such scenes, so I’m not sure I found it repetitive. I love the variations on her outfit, the commentary on fashion of the male gaze, the “blow job” lips tutorial video and the shots of her well-coiffed braids in the day sequences at her parent’s house. I’m not sure the last time I remember seeing a movie that was so enamored with braids.
Wife mentions that the “reverse-Winter” sequence with Bo Burnham drives a “knife in the heart” for the audience. Here, I’m going to pause so that you can stop here and go and watch the movie, but for the rest of us join me on the other side. The montage feels so pure and light, but that same well-constructed second act rankled her in the the final scene of the film, when the conspiracy is thwarted by a “just-word fallacy.” In my opinion, the movie can’t really win with its decision in the final act. It either gets it from the folks who think it feels preachy and morbid leaving the men off Scot-free, or it gets knocked for trying to let her Batman justice from the grave. Friends who were watching this concurrently with me kept using that phrase to describe her arc and actions, and I like it so I’m going to preserve it here.
I should also mention for the umpteenth time that this movie follows some of the tropes of another movie that’s grown on me over time, The Burnt Orange Heresy, which I’ve written about a couple times here, and I’m well aware that I’m one of two reviewers of this movie on Metacritic right now, which means that approximately no one is interested in taking me up on this movie. In some ways, I think I am becoming a very specialized reviewer of Elizabeth Debicki’s cult canon of films. At any rate, if you are a fan of the things that Mulligan & Co. are dealing in this flick, you should check out Burnt Orange Heresy stat.
Wife says, “It’s weird because I didn’t like it that much, but if I read a negative review written by a man, I would think, ‘Oh, he doesn’t like it because he’s a man,” to which I say, she watched about every fifth frame of the movie while doing work on the couch, so I’m not sure she’s going to be the most reliable reviewer for this one, though she did clock some of the big twists in this film. My own impression is that the movie does some very good character work within the confines of a pretty unremarkable story. I’m willing to be convinced otherwise: Friends and I liked the chaotic, unpredictable nature of the first half of the movie, (Wife says this is a major impression she gets from the reviews–that folks enjoyed the chameleon nature of the genre) but Wife says that she liked the second half, after we departed from the variations on a theme.
“One way about it that’s nice is that she almost claws her way out of the revenge loop with the guy, but the thing that stops it is when Allison Brie comes back to her after reacting to the way that she’s been punished by her, and with that new information she denies herself a happy ending,” Wife comments. (She’s dictating this from the other room as she formulates more opinions.)
Ultimately, I think on the scale of critical/reactionary to creative/additive, PYW fits very comfortably on the reactionary side of the spectrum, along with a movie like Isn’t It Romantic?, but at the same time, I think it’s wrong to say we didn’t enjoy the ride (although as I’m writing, Wife is saying on balance she enjoyed the other movie we watched a couple days ago more, Johnny Tsunami from 1999, but once again, she’s not a reliable critic). I’m not sure what this movie advances with its fantasy revenge plot and its biting takedowns of the Nice Guy fallacy, but it must also be satisfying to have it out there and on record. I kind of wonder if this is another moment when I’m going to ask/beg you to see Assassination Nation so that you can tell me if that movie did it better.
