Alice, Darling

Alice, Darling

Alice is troubled by something. She’s underwater, looking up at the dim light and floating seaweed above her. She isn’t swimming to the surface for air not yet. This is a scene from later in “Alice, Darling,” but it’s also a visual metaphor for how she feels. In reality, she’s back on land, meeting her friends at a city restaurant.

But even now that she’s got good company again, her mind is elsewhere; beneath the smile Alice (Anna Kendrick) wears is the fact that she keeps an abusive partner named Simon (Charlie Carrick), which comes out in conversations made uncomfortable by guilt trips and hair-pulling anxiety attacks.

As far as relationship red flags go, they’re clearer than worried friend billboard signs but Alice ignores them like their love language of whoever they’re dating. Her friends Sophie (Wunmi Mosaku) and Tess (Kaniehtiio Horn) stage an intervention for their friend who’s sinking away from them disguised as a birthday getaway: swim up and get out. Save yourself.

“Alice, Darling,” directed by Mary Nighy yes, Bill’s daughter is a drama about getting caught in rip current romance told through simple means of communication. To outsiders such as her friends or viewers, all the telltale signs are obvious: But Alice herself continues performing mental gymnastics around why his demands for control over her body/attention/time should be interpreted love/affection.

She has dug so deep into defensive positions that she cannot see what damage Simon has done with his behavior; how much it makes her afraid ask for even just one moment alone; how suffocatingly he clings onto every inch of skin available

Nighy balances those points of view as fairly as possible. Every exchange or nervous look from one friend to another, from one lover to another, seems like a negotiation with captors. Many of the moments that should be tender between the young couple are brutal instead; they’re verbal and emotional abuse. The tension in the air is baked into every confrontational staging between these two or how detached Alice looks and feels from her friends. Even when Simon isn’t literally there in the scene, his presence’s fallout is visually evident: It’s isolated Alice from those who actually care about her.

The murkiness in Alice’s relationship extends to the film’s aesthetics through cinematographer Mike McLaughlin. Alice’s world looks a little less bright than that lived by her friends, like she only ever ventures out on overcast days. There is a warm tone to the girlfriend’s cabin trip in the woods but something still just looks off like peace and serenity are missing from this location entirely.

In an unnecessarily complicating move for an already tense drama, Alanna Francis’ script throws a missing young woman subplot into their trip; it adds danger where it doesn’t need to be. Alice fixates on her (perhaps fatalistically so) and the mystery becomes an excuse for Simon escalating his control over her; maybe it’s supposed to work as a cautionary tale for Alice or something to entice her into escaping, but none of this quite pans out as effectively as her narrative journey with friends.

Kendrick embodies holding onto someone harmful as if Kendrick were physically holding onto something hurtful being called “Alice.” “He wouldn’t love me if he knew how bad I am,” she justifies mistreatment repeatedly with them (her friends).

Her performance here is a stunning departure from bubbly screen presence we’re used to seeing come out of Anna Kendrick; behind distracted stares you can see that part of herself fading away, being replaced by the gaze of a person who has to calculate every pro and con of what they say before they say it because she’s overwhelmed by pressure and can’t swim up for air an SOS communicated through range of reactions, from catatonic vacant stares to succumbing to heaving waves of a panic attack on bathroom floor. Kendrick’s committed both to this story as well as her character itself.

Kendrick’s performance is one of the strongest parts about “Alice, Darling.” Under Nighy’s direction, she puts together an emotional portrait not only about someone who’s about to lose themselves in love but also realizes that they’ve been surrounded by true love all along. For every cutting remark Simon makes at her expense there are friends trying their bests (not enough) to save the person they know underneath; that tension makes for good drama but it takes team’s sensitivity in order make this feel as authentic as possible. It’s like you’re taking your first breath under credits after having held it underwater until now relief.

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