In a few years, when talking about ‘Rust’, no one will remember a minute of the movie, but it will always be that filming in which Alec Baldwin killed Halyna Hutchins, like ‘The Raven’, regardless of its cinematographic merits, It will always be remembered more for being the last (forced) role of Brandon Lee.
The same thing happens, saving the distances, to ‘Don’t worry my dear’, presented at the San Sebastian Festival: we have all lived very intensely the soap opera behind the scenesthe horns, the alleged spitting, the firing of Shia LaBeouf, the leaked video of Olivia Wilde talking about “Miss Flo”, Florence Pugh herself in Venice with an Aperol Spritz in hand during the press conference of the rest of the team. The film is nothing more than the background of the cinematographic buzz of the season… And after seeing it, it’s normal: it’s the only way someone was going to talk about her so much.
OliviaVision
Movies have taught us to fear America’s suburban neighborhoods. From ‘The Truman Show’ to ‘Wandavision’ through ‘The Stepford Wives’, ‘Desperate Housewives’ or ‘Vivarium’, there is not a line of absolutely identical residential houses joined only by a road that does not make us intuit that something bad is about to happen. There are many possible variations based on that American ideal of the 50s, always so full of color, smiles, submissive women and crime. so many, that take the simplest, most typical and boring path, as does ‘Don’t worry dear’It is the most disappointing of all.
It is incomprehensible how Olivia Wilde has decided to go from the (despite everything) wonderful comedy of characters that was ‘Supernerds’ to this dystopia all to one hundred in which everything, from minute one, is telegraphed. The director treats the audience with embarrassing haughtiness, reinforcing concepts over and over again in a script as subtle as a fifteen ton steamroller accompanied by a visual style that at this point is not surprising, but he thinks so.
And, when everything explodes and the mystery becomes obvious not only to the audience (who have already sensed the gist of it for more than an hour) but also to the characters, the film, which has at least been distinguished so far by an even tone and striking, consistent directionexplodes in the air and becomes the chronicle of the announced disaster that so many predicted.
Reasons to worry, dear
Sorry to disappoint those who go looking for bait, but ‘Don’t worry dear’, for the most part, It is not a bodge, nor an infamous movie, nor will it go down in the history of the worst movies of history It is worse than all that, because at least that way it would have provoked some reaction. Wilde’s tape is the simplest, the least common multiple of dystopiasan absolute nonsense that does not provoke emotions, furious debates or anything more than an absolute and deep indifference.
It’s not the fault, of course, of Florence Pugh, who demonstrates here that she is capable of lifting to the simplest (and paradoxically less humble) plate of macaroni with tomato sauce: the actress moves with ease in the role of a happy wife who begins to notice that there is something strange in her neighborhood. It is she, and only she, who comes out the winner of ‘Don’t worry dear’above the solvent Harry Styles and an Olivia Wilde who tries to have so much of her own voice that she ends up forcing her.
It is not that, beyond the final minutes, with a chase that transmits genuine embarrassment, Olivia Wilde does not give up. Quite the opposite: she knows how to create iconic shots (but that she repeats over and over again ad nauseam), moves the camera at the appropriate moments, knows how to imitate the style of the 50s when necessary. And yet the tape is lacking soul, heart and style, as if the planning had already been done and it was directed by a machine. It has some great moments (Pugh pinned against the glass of her house) but they don’t make up for some action scenes that the director clearly doesn’t know how to tackle. It is normal that she looked for new challenges after ‘Super Nerds’, but this embarrassment was not necessary.
Here women run
There was a phrase by Wilde that went viral during the interviews for the presentation of the tape in which he indicated that female pleasure prevailed in it: “Men don’t cum in this movie. Only women!”. It’s technically true, but makes you wonder if you have understood your own movie, a portrait of female submission through induced happiness with a husband who rewards his wife’s barbecues with cunnilingus from time to time. ‘Don’t worry dear’ may have had good intentions (I have no doubt), but it had a few turns left before it was fully tightened.
The simplicity of the tape is terrifying, from the first of the script, more typical of a series B from eighty years ago than from today, but which does not even serve as a tribute. Something goes wrong when you reveal your great mystery and there are those in the room who suppress a laugh when discovering that their first intuition was correct. It is, to put it that way, as if on the first page of an Agatha Christie novel the butler is caught in the same room as the murdered man with the bloody knife in his hand, and in the final twist it is revealed that he was indeed the murdered man. assassin. There can be no dramatic tension with such an obvious result.
And, despite everything, ‘Don’t worry dear’ can be seen. It’s simple, sometimes disastrous but well acted and with good ideas from a director obsessed with making a difference. Y, it certainly never feels boring or feels like a slow motion train wreck. It is, rather, like a commuter ride that you have already done several times: you are not going to see anything that surprises you, but you are not bothered by having made the trip either, but what you are going to remember most is the anger you saw in some seats among a group that was called everything. In the end, that’s where you worry. Dear.