Directed by Julian Jarrold, "The Girl" documents the alleged sexual and psychological abuse of actress Tippi Hedren (Sienna Miller) at the hands of acclaimed film director Alfred Hitchcock (Toby Jones).
Some have complained that "The Girl" engages in character assassination, and that it unfairly portrays Hitchcock as an abusive pervert. This is mostly irrelevant. Miller and Jones are unconvincing as Hedren and Hitchcock, their characters are superficially written and the film's central metaphor – that the productions of Hitchcock's "Marnie" and "The Birds" were deliberate attempts at indirect or symbolic rape – are silly. More importantly, the film's version of Hitchcock never convinces as either an obsessive control freak or sexually dysfunctional abuser; this is not how such personalities behave. "The Girl's" problem is not that it character assassinates Alfred Hitchcock, but that it trivialises and distorts what real psychological and sexual abuse looks like and how real victims and abusers look and behave when locked in such relationships.
Ironically, Hitchcock's own films were superb at chronicling how women are abused and buffeted about by patriarchal forces. Hitchcock may have fetishized women, may have turned them into trinkets and ornaments, but his films were often explicitly about the problems of such psychic and literal violence. "The Girl", in contrast, is just bad art.
5/10 - Worth one viewing.
Some have complained that "The Girl" engages in character assassination, and that it unfairly portrays Hitchcock as an abusive pervert. This is mostly irrelevant. Miller and Jones are unconvincing as Hedren and Hitchcock, their characters are superficially written and the film's central metaphor – that the productions of Hitchcock's "Marnie" and "The Birds" were deliberate attempts at indirect or symbolic rape – are silly. More importantly, the film's version of Hitchcock never convinces as either an obsessive control freak or sexually dysfunctional abuser; this is not how such personalities behave. "The Girl's" problem is not that it character assassinates Alfred Hitchcock, but that it trivialises and distorts what real psychological and sexual abuse looks like and how real victims and abusers look and behave when locked in such relationships.
Ironically, Hitchcock's own films were superb at chronicling how women are abused and buffeted about by patriarchal forces. Hitchcock may have fetishized women, may have turned them into trinkets and ornaments, but his films were often explicitly about the problems of such psychic and literal violence. "The Girl", in contrast, is just bad art.
5/10 - Worth one viewing.