(2022, USA, 123')
“Everybody treats me as if I’m crazy, but I’m not”. These are Alice’s words in Olivia Wilde’s latest film. Suspense, rhythm, plot twist, empathic tension, and narrative vertigo make this movie a psychological thriller building upon unreliable parallel realities. California desert, 1950s: Alice is a wife in the city of Victory, and dedicates her life to home and family. A perfect woman: strong, loving, caring, hard-working. This, though, is the role others picked for her. Despite (apparent) luxury and the reassuring normalcy of a rigid society, Alice suspects something darker and menacing hides beyond the human mind, behaviour, and relationships, a sort of mass social experiment that Alice tries to make sense of in one way only: by breaking rules.
Born in New York in 1984, Olivia Wilde is known to the younger generations as Alex of The O.C. fame, as Remy Hadley in House M.D., and Quorra in Tron. Her directorial debut took place in 2019 with Booksmart. Don’t Worry Darling is her second, much anticipated feature film, that will see Wilde also starring as Bunny.
