Olivia Wilde masters genre cinema

Don’t Worry Darling is much better than the controversies over the falling out between its actors and its director which surrounded its passage at the Venice Film Festival. Olivia Wilde signs a clever thriller around Florence Pugh, Harry Styles and Chris Pine. The first two embody a young couple very much in love living in an apparently paradisiacal community located in the middle of the desert. The last plays a charismatic guru guardian of a mysterious project.

“Don’t worry darling”, announces the ironic title of the film. However, the unfortunate heroine has reason to worry! She discovered a mysterious portal while walking in a forbidden area and saw her best friend committing suicide. Things don’t work out for her when those around her claim she dreamed it all up. “This psychological thriller is my declaration of love for films that push the boundaries of our imagination,” explains the director in a note of intent. She skilfully juggles references between anxiety and science fiction.

An ultra-referenced film

It’s impossible not to think about the series The prisoner in front of the artificially perfect world where the characters evolve: a real dream of the 1950s where the men go to work in gleaming cars while their wives keep the house between two sessions of shopping and cocktails with friends. The Women of Stepfordfrom the novel by Ira Levin, and their overly flaunted perfections also influenced the filmmaker, as did the shots of photographer Slim Aarons, whose shot Poolside Gossip seems to suffuse the aesthetic and atmosphere of the entire film. Great paranoid movies like Rosemary’s Baby (1968) by Roman Polanski and The Invasion of the Grave Destroyers (1956) by Don Siegel certainly played a role in Olivia Wilde’s cinephilia. The impression of persecution felt by the young woman whose entourage becomes hostile, evokes these two classics of anguish in the cinema.

Add to that a little touch of Matrix (yes, yes) and you get entertainment full of surprises. Don’t Worry Darling talks about the place of women in society with a lot of humor and action. Enough to make it very amusing for those who love inventive and uninhibited genre cinema.

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