I couldn’t fully decide how I felt about this luscious, vicious and provocative thriller, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
When I watch a movie I usually walk away with clear thoughts and feelings, but not so much with this strange creature from director JT Mollner. Truth be told, I felt weirdly distanced from the film for most of its running time, yet somehow it left a strong lingering impression. This is likely to be one of those movies I need to see more than once to form a definitive judgement. At the very least, I felt like I’ve seen something quite different and that’s to be treasured.
The film’s received a lot of raves and pretty much every review I watched said the same thing: it’s best to go in completely blind, knowing as little about the story as possible. The only thing I knew about Strange Darling was that it somehow involved a serial killer, but that’s no spoiler since the movie claims to be the dramatisation of the real-life 1970s killings in its opening crawl.
The story is actually complete fiction, and in retrospect the opening might have turned me against the film without me realising. Not only did it proclaim its true-crime credentials, but it also informed me that I was about to watch a thriller in six chapters, shot on 35mm film. Yes the film looks gorgeous, with wonderful rich colours that you just don’t get with digital, but could it get any more pretentious and proud of itself, shouting from the rooftops how special and quirky it is? I definitely required some winning over after this irritating start.
As promised, the story is split into six chapters, presented in non-linear fashion. It kicks off with Chapter 3, in which we see a terrified, bloodied woman (Willa Fitzgerald) run from a man in a pickup truck with a shotgun in his hands. A jump to Chapter 1 later on shows the two ready to embark on a night of kinky sex and drugs in a motel. You naturally expect twists, shocks and surprises when you watch a cat-and-mouse thriller with a jumbled narrative, but I have to credit this movie for going into places I genuinely didn’t expect to see onscreen in the current social climate. It takes some very sharp turns and subverts some of the most deeply held assumptions and expectations in a way I personally found refreshing.
I’ve already praised the look of the film but it’s worth repeating just how much I loved the film’s vibrant style. It’s a massive surprise to learn that this is a feature debut for Giovanni Ribisi, a character actor now turned director of photography. For such a dark and violent movie, Strange Darling is surprisingly colourful, with deep rich reds and hypnotising blues practically jumping off the screen. There’s a surreal, dreamlike quality to the film that at times evokes David Lynch. The chilling original soundtrack, including a moody cover version of Love Hurts, further elevates its atmosphere.
For all the cleverness, tension and alluring visuals, I have to say that I never got emotionally invested enough to experience a true white-knuckle ride, apart from the baseline discomfort most people would feel at the sight of a woman in mortal danger. The price of not knowing if you can trust anything onscreen is a certain degree of emotional distance, and overall the film feels like it is more concerned with its puzzle pieces rather than real character work. By the end of it all, Willa Fitzgerald’s phenomenal performance did win me over, and so did the movie’s wild, bold, twisted spirit. Some films feel less impressive the more you think back and mull over, but in case of Strange Darling I found it more admirable the more I thought about it.
P.S. I expected the cinema to be small for such a niche release, but my tiny cinema also had the smallest big screen I’ve ever seen. I could easily imagine it as a home cinema in somebody’s mansion.
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