Front Row at the Movies
NYFC Screening of
"Gone Girl" Might
Worry Married Couples
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
What if your wife went missing?
And what if you told the police how much you loved your wife? What if you told them about your happy marriage? After all, this is your fifth wedding anniversary.
But what if your wife’s diary told a different story? What if it painted a picture of a floundering marriage? What if the diary said you’d turned abusive after you lost your job as a journalist? What if the police discovered you’ve used all your wife’s trust money to open a bar? And that you recently increased her life insurance?
Uh-oh.
That’s the he-said she-said structure of this film by David Fincher ("Seven," "The Social Network"). Scenes with husband Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck). Voice Over with wife Amy (Rosamund Pike).
The two stories don’t mesh. Maybe she’s what we call an unreliable narrator. Or maybe the evidence is right, pointing to Nick as a murderer.
There are lots of plot twists. Nothing is as it seems.
Tonight is a rescheduled date for "Gone Girl," the latest advanced screening by the New York Film Critics. This is a one-night-only event at the Tropic Cinema -- the movie followed by a live simulcast interview with author/screenwriter Gillian Flynn.
"Gone Girl" is based on Flynn’s acclaimed novel of the same name. A former Entertainment Weekly television writer, she made use of her own experience in being downsized to portray the two out-of-work characters. "I liked the idea of marriage told … by two narrators who were perhaps not to be trusted," she says.
She once wrote an autobiographical essay titled "I Was Not A Nice Little Girl." In it, she says women fail to acknowledge their own violent impulses. She tells us she got some of her inspiration for Amy Dunne from her own interior monologue.
She describes marriage as "the ultimate mystery."
I wonder if her husband is worried?
srhoades@aol.com
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