It’s the 1950s, and in an idyllic cul-de-sac with big houses, some sexy old cars are pulling out of their driveways. In the cars are men in sharply tailored suits, and in the driveways are their wives: all bodiced dresses, curled hair, lipstick and cigarettes. They send their big men off to work with a kiss and a wave. The cars are the same colours as the suits, and the suits are the same colour as the dresses. Everything gleams like a fresh manicure or a dentally insured smile: a glare that feels a little bit like looking too directly at the sun.
This is Victory, California: a lurid, “sun-baked paradise” where, of course, everything perfect shall soon go perfectly wrong. Jack and Alice, the Harry Styles–Florence Pugh leading pair of the forebodingly-titled, comma-phobic Don’t Worry Darling, are so happily and excitedly married that the neighbours constantly hear them passionately canoodling from next door. While Jack heads off every morning to his 9-to-5 as a technical engineer at the mysteriously opaque Victory Project, where he deals with the “development of progressive materials”, Alice is living the dream. In a different cute sundress every day, she ferociously Windexes the ceiling-to-floor windows of her bungalow, scrubs its mint-green bathtub on her knees, vacuums the tastefully beige living room carpet, and prepares a delicious roast for her husband to tuck into when he’s home. As she hums the same tune to herself over and over again – it’s been stuck in her head for days, she remarks to her neighbours – the low, charismatic voice of Victory Project leader Frank (Chris Pine at his TED Talkiest), waxes lyric and legend over the radio. “Chaos reigns under the auspice of equality,” he orates. When Alice’s desperately handsome husband gets home, he eats her out on the dinner table. It bears repeating: she’s living the dream.
But the walls soon begin to crack under this preternaturally bright Californian sunshine. One of the wives, Margaret (Kiki Layne, a quickly-silenced canary in a coal mine who sees something terrifying that the other women don’t), isn’t acting quite right. Her erratic behaviour catches like a contagion, and the questions she asks – “Why are we here?” – drive splinters into Alice’s tidy little life, which begins to collapse under the suffocating weight of hallucinatory visions. But when Alice attempts to tell people that something’s eerily amiss with this town and the Victory Project’s impenetrable red tape, the whole happy neighbourhood snaps its Stepford Wife necks in her direction. Florence Pugh, of course, finds no challenge with the role of earnest, increasingly unsettled Alice: her perpetually downset mouth and wide-eyed expressive face broadcast the seven stages of paranoia like a jumbo screen. Welcome to Gaslight City, baby! While Don’t Worry Darling definitely isn’t anywhere near Midsommar in a pinup dress, there’s no denying that Florence is the supreme cowboy at this rodeo. Harry Styles doesn’t quite hold a candle to her, but he isn’t that shabby either as a disturbingly too-shiny, too-happy husband. (And as you’d expect, that one clip which made way too many rounds on Twitter doesn’t give the full story of his pleasantly competent performance.)
If you get the feeling you know exactly where Don’t Worry Darling is headed at every stage, you’re probably right. It’s a familiar story, adequately told: a gently-updated feminist parable that doesn’t quite say anything we haven’t already heard. There’s not a subtle or revolutionary bone in its body, but it’s still rather fun to watch the threads unravel. It’s a shame, of course, because it would take something much more excitingly executed to overshadow the circumstances of the film’s release – which, inevitably, feels like it will be the story with more staying power. But some delightfully curated and attentive production design, costuming, and original scoring (plus, an appearance from Dita Von Teese, who only ever makes things better) means it’s never dull. If you’re looking for some brightly-coloured popcorn entertainment to switch off your brain to, darling: you’re all sorted.