Daisy Ridley stars in Inert Neo-Noir thriller

Daisy Ridley in the movie “Magpie.”

Courtesy of SXSW/Rob Baker Ashton

Magpie The film is about a toxic heterosexual marriage dynamic that you’ve surely seen a thousand times before, if not in real life, then at least in popular culture. Annette (Daisy Ridley) is the long-suffering wife who sacrifices her career to cook, clean and raise the children for an ungrateful man. Ben (Shazad Latif) is this ungrateful guy who only seems to notice Annette when he’s angry with her.

When a glamorous actress (Matilda Lotz (Alicia)) enters their lives in the form of a movie role for their daughter (Heba Ahmed (Tilly), it’s practically certain that Ben will neglect Annette even more in favor of this shiny new romance. The big question, then, is what can Annette do—what? A woman on the brink may prove what she’s capable of once she’s pushed, but despite the exciting hook built on hot emotions and drastic actions, Magpie He proves to be too cold and ultimately too shy to elicit much reaction.

A big part of the problem lies in… MagpieA tendency to access the public over the private. So Ben is not just a Selfish Shiver But the most selfish shiver imaginable: When Ben and Annette’s baby starts crying, his reflexive response is to angrily turn to Annette with a “Shouldn’t you-?” When Tilly inadvertently lets out to her mother that he’s been hanging out with Alicia, he fixes the little girl with a glance and hisses “Well done.” Lacking the charm that makes himself an interesting villain nor the ability to present himself as a flawed, ordinary man, Ben is so easy to hate that it’s not even that fun to hate him.

Likewise, Alicia is not presented as a woman on her own journey, but rather as a symbolic example for Ben to project his aspirations onto, or for Annette to compare herself to. As Ben and Alicia’s flirtation over text messages heats up, Alicia is increasingly portrayed not as herself but as Ben’s fantasy of her, as director Sam Yates’s camera focuses on her smile as she tweets sweet nothings under a dreamy glow.

This leaves only Annette to navigate MagpieDeep psychological waters, with mixed results. On the one hand, Ridley is adept at navigating between the patience Annette Bean and Tilly display and the increasing pressure she faces in private. Meanwhile, Isobel Waller-Bridge’s raucous score and Dan Morgan’s deliberately dissonant sound design suggest darker impulses. In one evocative scene, Annette hears her baby’s cries echoing through the baby monitor she holds in her hand. Instead of going to him, she impulsively flees the family’s immaculate country house until the screen goes silent and she goes out of range. Then, after catching her breath, she slowly turned back. There is nothing to do but go back and try to endure the unbearable.

If we understand Annette well as an unhappy wife and mother, the deeper whys and wherefores of her life remain unexplored. Tom Bateman’s screenplay doesn’t make clear what Annette saw in Ben, what she would lose if he were gone, and what she hopes will happen instead. Even the scenes of Annette cracking under pressure — like the moment described above, or others when she holds a mirror until it shatters or slams her phone onto the table until it breaks — feel as if they could have come from any script about a frustrated wife; There are a few that are recorded as peculiar or specific to that individual. On some level the obfuscation seems intentional, intended to preserve the surprises of the third act. But the choice is stolen Magpie One of the basic emotional risks. We are left to wonder who Annette is beyond the ambiguous representation of every oppressed woman.

Worse still, when the film finally shows its cards, its hand proves to be a disappointment – ​​the whole thing hinges on a twist that isn’t too hard to guess, but which nonetheless gets a complete conclusion. Saltburn-Montage of the ending in a style in case you weren’t paying attention. Meanwhile, though the narrative is ostensibly driven by big emotions and outrageous choices, the film finds no serious pathos or bad thrills in Annette and Ben’s predicament. I craved more sex, more violence, more chaos – more anything To provoke a reaction, to delight, confuse or anger me. Annette’s outer calm is a mask meant to conceal the intense emotions burning within her. MagpieIt is merely a reflection of the emptiness beneath it. Despite the anger and sadness coursing through the veins of the plot, the film struggles to raise its pulse.