This film presents an askew world that can be so jarring, it comes back to being unintentionally humorous before settling into a tense plot. If I didn’t know it came from two masterminds of the psychological thriller genre who knew what they were doing — the source material by novelist Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train, Talented Mr Ripley) and Adrian Lyne as director (Fatal Attraction)---I would describe this as an extremely bizarre cross between the 2009 Saturday Night Live sketch “I Have Sex with Your Wife” and the 1966 classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in which an older couple (George and Martha, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton) unleash a 90-minute burst of raw, sociopathic marital dysfunction on an unassuming young couple they’ve invited to dinner.
The key players are Vic (Ben Affleck), a lower-middle-aged entrepreneur who’s now a member of the idle rich after retiring off a technological invention. His wife, Melinda, (Ana de Armas) is a gorgeous firecracker with a voracious sexual appetite who seems to get off on having affairs right under her husband’s nose.
It’s initially kind of vague whether seeing her wife gallivant with other men in such close proximity is something he welcomes as a kink or just tolerates it, but yikes! These two need therapy before things get all murdery and out of hand.
Or maybe, things have already gotten that far? Vic even admits it out loud to one of Melinda’s lovers.
On the surface, little about this film makes sense. Why do all three of Melinda’s on-screen lovers seem so blase about violating Vic and Melinda’s marriage after coming face-to-face with Vic? They all consistently seem to feel little guilt and have little concern for their own safety at this transgression. What is up with Vic and snails? If it’s an open secret that Vic killed someone in what appears to be a tight-knit neighborhood, why isn’t he a social pariah?
This is up there with Darren Aronofsky and David Lynch in terms of mind-f***ery, but here’s the thing:
There’s a great internal consistency to this world that demands admiration. These two might be less memorable than George and Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but that’s partially because George and Martha were the king and queen of mood whiplash.
Instead, Melinda is always a suburban temptress and Vic is always a mysterious cauldron of dark impulses.
If you feel like this film doesn’t feel right, it’s not supposed to. It’s a skewed universe where these people are too insane to exist but they do resemble certain aspects of an unhealthy marriage pushed to extremes. And to the degree that anything still doesn’t match up, it’s certainly discussion-provoking.
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