Strange Darling
Written and directed by JT Mollner – with superb 35mm colour photography by Givanni Ribisi, who has switched career tack from acting – this is the kind of movie you need to see cold to get the most out of. Simply saying that probably sets the mind to asking questions, which is fair enough, but also possibly gives a little too much away – so maybe come back here after you’ve seen the film.
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It opens with a caption that makes the heart sink after FrightFest has programmed a few too many Ted Bundy movies – this is based on a serial killer case which crossed several states and came to an end in the Oregon woods – then takes an unusual narrative approach, stating that there will be six chapters but starting with chapter three. The Lady (Willa Fitzgerald), a young woman with an ear wound, is running through the woods, pursued by the Demon (Kyle Gallner), a man with a hunting rifle. It seems clearcut, but the mood is off – signalled by use of the song ‘Love Hurts’ (in a cover featuring Keith Carradine) on the soundtrack and the match of vibrant red colours in the Tom-and-Jerry antagonists’ clothes – and things get more wayward when the Lady comes across the isolated home of ‘old hippies’ Frederick (Ed Begley Jr) – more of an ‘old biker’, he insists – and Genevieve (Barbara Hershey, Carradine’s ex-sister-in-law) – who also admits to being a ‘doomsdayer’. Then we jump to Chapter Five and the Lady is hidden in a freezer while the Demon roams the property shooting at hiding spaces. Then finally we jump to Chapter One and the couple getting together for initially consensual casual sex with s-m trimmings, and a sense of roleplay and a serious desire to hurt being mixed up in their back-and-forth patter.
It’s not quite a two-character film – Begley Jr and Hershey are perfectly cast in cameos (and, yes, Hershey is cursed to be beautiful all her life) and other characters (including one played by Ribisi) show up in Chapters Two and Six when we get to them – but it does give its two leads a wide range of physical and emotional peril to play with. Both actors have been impressive before – Gallner in Jennifer’s Body, The Master Cleanse and The Cleansing Hour, Fitzgerald in the TV series Reacher, Scream and The Fall of the House of Usher – but get a rare showcase here. Mollner consistently makes bold, exciting choices, from the Christopher Nolan-like disruption of chronological order to the use of breathy original songs from Z Berg (her youtube channel’s tagline is ‘if Laura Palmer didn’t die’) and a couple of stunning split diopter shots. And it’s very insightful about extreme relationships – power, consent, trust, submission, transgression, cruelty, crime.
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