Woman of the Hour
Director: Anna Kendrick
Screenplay: Ian McDonald (Superman Returns)
Cast: Kendrick (Pitch Perfect, Up in the Air), Daniel Zovatto (Don’t Breathe)
Rating: NR
Length: 1h 35m
Curiously, Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut, Woman of the Hour, weaves humor into a semi-true story about rape and murder. Not only is the subject matter not what her all-American persona as an actress prepared us for, she also deftly plays with a dual tone and ends with a thriller that engages and amuses.
Rodney (Daniel Zovatto) charms mostly runaway and disaffected young women with his photography interest and the hint they may be discovered in LA as a result. Sheryl (Kendrick) meets him as one of the bachelors in the ‘70’s cheesy game show, The Dating Game. Too smart to fall for his charms, she avoids certain death while he goes on to kill more and die in prison. Most men in this thriller demand she avoid their cultural dominance as she suppresses her emotional and intellectual superiority. Yes, it’s toxic masculinity in tts several forms.
The interest is not so much as to how he succeeds but as to how he can seduce. The answer to that is his willingness to listen to his victims while evidencing interest and empathy. How all women would reject him seems impossible, an indictment of a society that doesn’t prepare them or arm them against toxic masculinity. The Dating Game is an apt metaphor for society’s vacuity and young ‘uns lack of education both at home and out there.
The questions the bachelorettes ask are inane until Sheryl makes up her own on the fly during the show. While it’s fun to see the show decades later, young women are somewhat clueless still when confronted by masculine duplicity and their own outlandish dreams.
Woman of the Hour is a bloodless crime thriller whose concern about toxic masculinity is real. When Rodney brutalizes a victim by strangling and then resuscitating her, Kendricks moves her camera to suggest the brutality but still hide the visual reality for the general audience.
Hooray for Netflix’s distributing it and Anna Hendrix guiding it strongly into thematic territory while providing high-quality entertainment.
Woman of the Hour
Director: Anna Kendrick
Screenplay: Ian McDonald (Superman Returns)
Cast: Kendrick (Pitch Perfect, Up in the Air), Daniel Zovatto (Don’t Breathe)
Rating: NR
Length: 1h 35m
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com