JT Mollner's Strange Darling understands and trusts lead Willa Fitzgerald to the point of sweaty, lip-licking ecstasy. The film lets her play around in its vibrant and violent world with the sort of maniacal abandon redolent of Isabelle Adjani in Andrzej Żuławski's Possession, and what a gift that is. The film, a thumping and ragged adrenaline rush from the get-go, drops us like a teetering top into Fitzgerald's passenger seat in medias res, leaving us to figure things out on our own, for it has a better preoccupation: Fitzgerald's swaggering, beguiling and bewildering character, the Lady.
It truly is best to go into this film blind, without knowing too much about the plot other than that it takes place over a single day, following a serial killer on a slap-dash damage control murder spree. Mollner (who directs his own script with perfect skill) tells his story in six chapters and an epilogue, all delivered to us out of order.
Fitzgerald's the Lady and horror darling Kyle Gallner's the Demon meet at a bar and head to a motel to have sex, pausing in their car to discuss logistics before embarking upon the Lady's BDSM fantasy. With this fragmented and non-linear form, and characters that volley cultural notions not only about gender, sex and power, but also fantasy and storytelling with a perfectly-balanced knowing and sincerity, Mollner asks us to find order in the mess.
It's a cat and mouse caper, except the Lady and the Demon endlessly shift between the roles: submissive and dominant, monster and victim, masculine and feminine. We are left breathless, sticky and grasping by this delightful task. So busy trying to untangle fact from preconceived notions about violence that we don't realize we are witness to a thriller as perfectly wrought as a puzzle box until the film's very final moments. It would be too flat and simple to say Strange Darling ends on a note simultaneously far from and intricately linked to the one it begins on, in the face of how fun and compelling it is. Experiencing the film first-hand feels as satisfying and gutting as sliding the final puzzle piece into place.
Visually, the film is stunning. Saturated primary colours bloom and explode, red being the most favoured. Giovanni Ribisi makes his feature film debut as a cinematographer and he shoots Strange Darling entirely on 35 mm film, and everything seems warm and sensual, like a charming serial killer right before they turn. Cigarette smoke becomes a hazy fabric lustily spilling out of the Lady's mouth and nose, roiling like a whipped sea around her face, and entering the Demon's mouth as they sit in a car talking about safe words. It becomes a shared breath of passion before they've even undressed; you can feel it getting in your hair, too.
The verdant nature of the film through which the two chase each other is close, fresh and alive; it feels like an injustice when its beauty is sullied by the Lady and the Demon. The world of the film, whether it be lush nature or a farmhouse marked colourfully by the personalities of its inhabitants (Barbara Hershey and Ed Begley Jr. playing doomsdayers whose house the Lady takes refuge in), is as much a worthwhile character as the two leads through Ribisi's lens. Even spilled blood hurts to witness, spewing from the softest parts of bodies lively as a river, squelching and babbling.
But Ribisi's greatest success is his framing of the Lady. No matter where she is, everything seems to funnel our vision to her face, poised with potential. Mollner and Ribisi understand that Fitzgerald is a skilled actor, and so they manoeuvre around her in a way that grants her and the Lady centre stage. It's a thrill unto itself to watch the Lady work her mouth, chewing the inside of her cheek when she's frustrated and trying to figure out her next move, her eyes fixed ahead of her and the nerves underneath them twitching as she wonders if there even is a next move. She's often terrified of the people before her, but instead of fleeing, her fear leaves her gaze locked upon whoever frightens her, as if indignant towards their audacity to terrify her.
In one spectacular scene, merely a few seconds long, we see the Lady's immediate and visceral surprise in the gape of her mouth alongside a rational calibration and calculation in the furrow of her brow as she works to make sense of the Demon's violence toward her, and satisfy what is expected of her by an onlooker. It's a sumptuous image of a woman trying to survive twofold: first in a dire and immediate manner, and then secondly in a cultural manner. Throughout the film, Fitzgerald conveys the immediate bodily, social and interpersonal demands the Lady is pulled by in how they play across her face and form with audacious gusto.
The most fascinating aspect of this film is that Fitzgerald and Gallner cannot give away the film's twist, which would be so easy to do through their mannerisms and carriage. They carry themselves with ambiguity and precision, a duality Fitzgerald works with breathtakingly. She is obviously a hurt woman, and Gallner's character apparently the villain; but there are also elements of her movements that sow doubt, a certain confidence in her swiftness, a ruggedness in how she rips off a bandage. Something here is off-kilter: Mollner and Ribisi don't so much trail after the Lady as hover before her — trying to keep up, anticipating her next move, taking all of her complexity in.
Fitzgerald wields her voice to perfection, too, elongating certain words when her character is comfortable in herself. Her words swell and take up space when she physically can't, when the framing leaves her within a corner on screen; or clipping as she lilts toward a higher more feminine register when she's flirting. Fitzgerald's own greatest success, though, is a wordless delivery in the final three minutes.
With the lens glued to her face, she, hardly moving save for trembles and quivers that for the Lady would be involuntary, inches towards her chosen end, in awe of the day she has had, while also feeling the pain in her body. This scene is so jaw-dropping — endlessly reminiscent of Adjani's gall in the iconic subway scene in Possession or a stare-down with the ghost of a fourth wall in a Kubrick picture — a perfect flourish to end a superb film.
Gallner also delivers a great performance, and it's exciting to see him in such a fun and unique role as the Demon. He carries his trademark earnestness — that sweet, cheeky grin — with a cutting edge, stepping up to the challenge that Fitzgerald's the Lady lays out before him beautifully. Moreover, Mollner has baked a devilishly cunning sense of humour into this film that seems akin to last year's wonderfully sensual Sanctuary, delivering a gendered battle of wits and strength with a bloody twist through two characters who take great joy in playing with our expectations.
Ultimately, though, this is Fitzgerald's film. She carries the Lady — a character whose complex peaks and rugged slopes build up to a simple and innocuous summit — with preternatural understanding and perfect timing, a presence so captivating it's impossible to look away.
With Willa Fitzgerald's the Lady, Strange Darling delivers one of the year's most precious darlings so far.