First, so it doesn't get lost in the rest of this review, let me make it clear that this movie offers two painfully first-rate performances that will rip your emotional guts out. I've seen "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" several times, and I have to say that this movie is even more gut-wrenchingly powerful and well acted than that masterpiece.
It also comes off as a lot more "authentic" - a word played with a lot n this movie. While I like WAOVW a lot, the dialogue is very often very theatrical. Here, while there is also dialogue that sounds as if it is being recited from a stage play - Malcom's remarkable speech, delivered half in the kitchen and half in the garden, that drops the names of MANY famous movie directors and script writers, all at remarkable speed, for example - that is less often the case.
But this movie also plays with what we perceive to be natural. Perhaps the most remarkable instance of that is the scene where Marie presses the carving knife on the tile floor while truly terrifying Malcolm. You hang on every word of it, terrified of what she might do - only to discover that she is "acting," making the point - very well - that sometimes you cannot tell when a person is using real emotions to act and when they are just expressing "authentic" emotion. Elsewhere in the movie Malcolm describes that as the difference between creating a work of art and just making a video of oneself emoting and then posting it on YouTube.
That is brought home yet again at the end when we see that this movie was written and directed by a young white man, Sam Levinson, a point for which Levinson prepared us during Malcolm's garden-kitchen speech when the character asks what two Jewish men, David Selznick and Ben Hecht, could have had to contribute to Gone with the Wind. (A great deal, evidently.)
Watching two people who have feelings for each other rip each other's hearts out is not fun - though Marie at one point says that audiences love to watch it. But when the script is good and the acting and directing first-rate, it is a powerful experience. I strongly recommend this movie, but only to those in a good enough mood that it will not drive them into depression.
It also comes off as a lot more "authentic" - a word played with a lot n this movie. While I like WAOVW a lot, the dialogue is very often very theatrical. Here, while there is also dialogue that sounds as if it is being recited from a stage play - Malcom's remarkable speech, delivered half in the kitchen and half in the garden, that drops the names of MANY famous movie directors and script writers, all at remarkable speed, for example - that is less often the case.
But this movie also plays with what we perceive to be natural. Perhaps the most remarkable instance of that is the scene where Marie presses the carving knife on the tile floor while truly terrifying Malcolm. You hang on every word of it, terrified of what she might do - only to discover that she is "acting," making the point - very well - that sometimes you cannot tell when a person is using real emotions to act and when they are just expressing "authentic" emotion. Elsewhere in the movie Malcolm describes that as the difference between creating a work of art and just making a video of oneself emoting and then posting it on YouTube.
That is brought home yet again at the end when we see that this movie was written and directed by a young white man, Sam Levinson, a point for which Levinson prepared us during Malcolm's garden-kitchen speech when the character asks what two Jewish men, David Selznick and Ben Hecht, could have had to contribute to Gone with the Wind. (A great deal, evidently.)
Watching two people who have feelings for each other rip each other's hearts out is not fun - though Marie at one point says that audiences love to watch it. But when the script is good and the acting and directing first-rate, it is a powerful experience. I strongly recommend this movie, but only to those in a good enough mood that it will not drive them into depression.