KNOW YOUR PLACE (DON'T WORRY DARLING)

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You'd have to have been living on Mars these past few months to have heard nothing about 'Don't Worry Darling'.

Olivia Wilde's follow up to 'Booksmart' has been the endless source of tabloid gossip.

Over the past few months in the build-up to its release, Harry Styles fans have been on social media talking up his chances of bagging an Oscar nomination for Wilde's film.

The director's romantic relationship with the One Direction star became the source of fevered speculation about it irritating other members of the cast.

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In April, Wilde also had the displeasure of being served child custody papers on behalf of her former partner Jason Sudeikis during an appearance at Comic Con to discuss the film.

By the time the movie received its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, there was a definite sense that Wilde's movie was on the ropes.

Rumours that she had a major falling out on set with her leading lady were ramped up considerably when Florence Pugh opted to only walk the red carpet and attend the premiere in Venice but not join fellow cast members at what ultimately became a tetchy press conference.

Pugh and Chris Pine's decision to also not take part in subsequent promotional activity for the film prior to its US release further fuelled speculation.

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Wilde was forced to deny in an interview with Variety claims that Styles was paid three times Pugh's salary.

Shia LaBoeuf, who was originally cast in Styles' role, clashed with Wilde over claims he was fired - publishing texts to the actor director that appeared to confirm he quit the production because of his unhappiness with how under rehearsed the cast were.

Social media went into overdrive in Venice after footage of the premiere was interpreted as showing Styles spitting on his co-star Chris Pine while taking his seat at the screening - a claim both Pine and Wilde moved to dispel.

Following a deluge of negative reviews at the festival, the film has been variously marketed as a thriller, as a romantic drama and as dystopian horror.

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Wilde also gave a rather defensive interview this week on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' - trying (and not quite succeeding) to knock down the rumours that have swirled around the project.

And yet, despite 'Dont Worry Darling' being talked about as "the hot mess movie of 2022," some Hollywood insiders believe the $35 million film might make $27 million in the US on its opening weekend which might go some way towards soothing the nerves of Warner Bros studio execs.

So is the critical pile on for Wilde's film justified?

'Don't Worry Darling' has been written by Kate Silberman from an original idea by Shane and Carey Van Dyke that made it onto the 2019 Black List for hot screenplays in Hollywood.

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Set in a late 1950s/early 1960s-style Californian community, Pugh plays Alice Chambers, a housewife devoted like all the other housewives in her city to their husbands.

Alice is immaculately dressed and made up from the moment she cooks breakfast to going to bed at night.

She spends each working day making bacon, eggs, toast and coffee first thing for Harry Styles' Jack Chambers, cleaning the house and preparing their evening meal for him.

She also finds the time to take tram rides, attend a dance class run by Gemma Chan's housewife Shelley and to swig cocktails on the lawn or driveway with her best friend, Olivia Wilde's Bunny.

Jack drives the family car which she aspires to drive.

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The Chambers socialise with the other couples who live in similar houses with furniture and kitchenware chosen from the same catalogue.

The husbands dress in the same suits and work for the same company Victory which their city is named after.

All the men, including Jack, are also incredibly secretive about the work they do.

They all work for Chris Pine's Frank who founded the company and built the city and they show a cult like devotion to him.

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Not everyone is happy, though, in this picket fence world.

KiKi Layne's Margaret is dismissed by Bunny and the others as mentally disturbed when she starts to suggest that Victory is not the utopia that  everyone claims.

Plunged into grief after she wandered into the desert with her son only for her to return alone, there are some suggestions that the boy died or that he was taken from her as a punishment for breaking Frank's rule about not going beyond the city limits.

Riding the tram one day out to the city limits just for fun, Alice is rattled when she notices a plane that appears to crash in a nearby mountain.

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Shocked that the tram driver will not go to the crew's rescue, Alice sets off on foot to the site of the apparent crash and comes across a weird mountain top building - only for her to pass out in the heat.

She subsequently wakes up in her house while Jack struggles to make dinner.

Alice, however, begins to feel nothing is quite right about Victory and when she witnesses the covering up of Margaret'a suicide, she begins to get increasingly vocal about her concerns - only to be dismissed as mentally exhausted.

But will she be able to prove her suspicions about Frank and Victory being sinister are right?

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Wilde and Silberman draw on a lot of cinematic influences during the telling of their story.

The most obvious reference is Bryan Forbes' classic 1975 feminist satirical horror story 'The Stepford Wives' with Katharine Ross - a film based on an Ira Levin novel about oddly subservient wives in a Connecticut neighbourhood.

However there's also the white picket fence unease that pervaded David Lynch's 'Blue Velvet' and Peter Weir's 'The Truman Show'.

And as the film progresses, the dynamic between Alice and Jack begins to mirror the couple at the centre of Sam Mendes' 'Revolutionary Road'.

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Viewers will see traces too of Jordan Peele's 'Get Out,' Adrian Lyne's 'Fatal Attraction' and 'Jacob's Ladder,' Ridley Scott's 'Thelma and Louise,' Martin Scorsese's 'Good Fellas' and Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange'.

There's another reference I would love to make at this point but I will refrain as it might be a huge plot spoiler.

All of this movie referencing is fine and dandy but is 'Don't Worry Darling' the cinematic car crash many critics have claimed?

Contrary to this critic's expectations, it is a much better movie than anticipated.

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There's an awful lot going on in the movie - not just in terms of plot exposition but also stylistically.

Wilde shows huge ambition and growth as a director and makes the most of a rather modest studio budget with the help of Matthew Libatique's bright cinematography, Alfonso Goncalves' pacy film editing, Katie Byron's superb production design, Rachael Ferreira's vibrant set decoration, Ariane Phillips' magnificent costumes and Erika Toth and Mary Florence Brown's astute art direction.

Libatique's camera moves around in the first third of the film at such a pace that it's almost dizzying - particularly in a poolside sequence at Frank's house where it swirls round the couples as they chat.

The camera settles down into something more static and conventional just as the plot subverts convention - a bold move which may jar with some viewers.

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And while not every gamble in the film works, Wilde mostly pulls it off.

Some critics have blasted 'Don't Worry Darling' for having a convoluted plot, for trading in heavy handed symbolism and elevating style over substance?

But is it any more heavy handed and convoluted than 'The Stepford Wives,' 'Get Out' or 'Us'  in its skewering of male condescension and gaslighting?

At the core of the film are two great performances that in normal circumstances and less hysteria might be awards contenders and neither of them belong to Harry Styles.

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Florence Pugh has the biggest claim of the two.

The English actress carries the movie, with the action completely revolving around Alice and her gradual realisation that Victory and Frank isn't what it or he seems.

Delivering a fiercely intelligent performance, Pugh demonstrates, like Saoirse Ronan often does, that great screen acting isn't about what you say or how you say it but how you move and especially how you use your eyes.

The other terrific performance is Pine's which is full of surface charm but underlying, manipulative menace.

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As for the rest of the cast from Wilde, Layne, Chan, Nick Kroll and Asif Ali to Kate Berlant, Sydney Chandler, Douglas Smith, Ar'iel Stachel and Timothy Simons as the devious Dr Collins, they all provide solid support.

Styles also proves he is a pretty decent actor.

He's certainly a lot better than a lot of pop stars who have dabbled in acting (I'm looking at you Sting, Phil Collins, Madonna and Tina Turner), even if he is often blasted away by Pugh's juggernaut of a performance.

Wilde also deserves a lot better than some of the press the film has been receiving.

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True - there have been some self-inflicted wounds during the promotion of 'Don't Worry Darling'.

But this isn't 'Ishtar,' the 1994 remake of 'The Getaway' or 'Blackbird'.

And as we know from the likes of Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' Francis Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now,' Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining,' Sydney Pollack's 'Tootsie' or Marc Foster's 'World War Z,' good movies can be crafted out of some of the most troubled film production experiences.

'Don't Worry Darling' is a good movie - not a perfect one - that could well grow in stature in years to come once the dust has settled.

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So forget all the soap opera surrounding its production and release.

Judge it on its own merits.

'Don't Worry Darling' is ambitious. 

It takes on a big subject - the oppression of women - with real energy and a hell of a lot of imagination.

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Yes, it is a bombastic picture but, hey, Oliver Stone and Ridley Scott built careers out of making bombastic pictures.

And you know what?

I'd take a film as ambitious and risk taking as this over a hundred made to order Marvel movies any day.

('Don't Worry Darling' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on September 23, 2023)