Movie review: Don't Worry Darling

All is not as it seems in the movie Don't Worry Darling. Photo / Supplied

Don't Worry Darling (123 mins) (Mature audiences) Screening in cinemas now
Directed by Olivia Wilde

How could there be anything to worry about when everyone looks so perfect, the clothes are so beautiful, the cocktails so free-flowing?

In its 1950s setting, with its wonderful soundtrack of 1950s hits, its party-going loved up couples, everything looks all right, sort of, in that 1950s overly sunny way. But doubts creep in early on. What is that that shakes the cocktail glasses nearly off their shelf when there's no railway line nearby? That's the first hint of the thriller to come.

An aerial view of where we are shows a neatly organised suburban cul-de-sac, part of a well-planned residential area, strangely located like an oasis in the middle of the Mojave Desert, Southern California. Examples of other too perfect settings come to mind: Pleasantville (Gary Ross, 1998), The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998), Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001), The Stepford Wives (Frank Oz, 2004). What's gone wrong this time?

Two hours later, it's become perfectly clear that there's plenty to worry about. What is truth? Who can be trusted? Is the life we're living all it is meant to be or are we being coerced into something that's bad for us in some yet to be revealed way. It's excellent entertainment, if rather unsettling. You won't ever look at a neat and tidy arrangement of suburban houses in quite the same way ever again.

Central to the action are up and coming Jack (Harry Styles, who doesn't show anything of his parallel life as a singer) and his wife Alice (Florence Pugh) who stays at home being an increasingly unhappy housewife in the overly orderly town, called Victory. It's meant to be a Utopian settlement. Who in their right mind could be unhappy there? Immaculate Bunny (Olivia Wilde, who also directs) appears to fit in perfectly, with her two ideal children, so why isn't Alice happy?

Why indeed. What's wrong with going to classes where all the wives learn ballet, taught by the model of an ideal housewife, Shelley (Gemma Chan). Shelley inspires all the others, most of whom appear awestruck by both Shelley and her creepy cult-leader husband Frank (Chris Pine), who's the company chief of the mysterious Victory business.

Weird things start happening to Alice, starting with kaleidoscopic visions of synchronised dancing. The whole of her life seems to have gone down a rabbit-hole.

When Alice witnesses the suicide of one of the other wives, nobody believes her, but everybody's lying to her and she knows it. Considered crazy, she endures an intimidating interrogation by Victory's psychologist Dr Collins (Timothy Simons). Increasingly fearful, Alice becomes desperate to leave, but inside and outside Victory, the whole world seems to be closing in on her.

Women take matters into their own hands in the final scenes, but the film is less of an anthem to the women's movement than it is about the triumph of good over evil. Great stuff.

Highly recommended.

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