The Gift - Suspense, Old Style
Last night’s flick was The Gift, written and directed by co-star Joel Edgerton. The Gift is on old-style Hitchcock meets Film Noir sort of story, the kind where, within a couple minutes, you know that this story is not going to end well for someone. Just who it won’t end well for, and why, makes for an interesting, edge of the seat, low tech film that revels itself in tiny clues, suspicion and half revealed facts. If it were not set in contemporary Los Angeles, it would seem almost retro.
The story begins innocently enough, with cute couple Simon (Jason Bateman) and his wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall) relocating from Chicago to LA to advance Simon’s ambitious climb up the career ladder. Simon grew up in LA, so it’s a return to his old turf. They also seem to be leaving Chicago to get to a new environment and get a fresh start. Simon and Robyn’s recent past includes a lost pregnancy, a sensitive fact that is not mentioned at length, but which is important for her. While on a shopping trip to outfit the new house, the couple runs into Gordo (Joel Edgerton), an old friend from Simon’s high school who seems to appear out of nowhere. Simon seems reluctant to meet the ingratiating Gordo and seems to be covering up something about the past. Gordo, however, is bringing gifts, showing up at their house, being evasive about his life, impressing Robyn but generally making both Simon and the audience feel like there’ s a rising creep factor. Simon relates to Robyn that Gordo was referred to as the Weirdo in school and that it would probably be better if they kept some distance. Things get tense again when Gordo invites Simon and Robyn to a dinner party at his large, expensively decorated home. The other guests do not show up and subsequent events reveal that the home does not even belong to Gordo.
Months pass, Robyn is pregnant again, Simon has been promoted and Gordo is mainly out of the scene, apologizing in letters about the dinner party deception, but…he’s back again. Fish for an outdoor pond, given to Robyn and Simon by Gordo, die and their dog disappears. This is where it gets complicated. Gordon does seem to be very high on the creep scale, but then Simon is also evasive about what happened years ago. The more Gordo cranks up the tension, the more it’s clear that Simon has secrets. I won’t go any further than what’s in the trailer.
I thought this was an excellent, edge-of-the-seat thriller, well rooted in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock. Your suspicion starts early, builds as the plot thickens and doesn’t relent until the credits roll. It’s Edgerton’s first try at full length directing and a fine one. Jason Bateman, as Simon, seems to share a lot of mannerisms and attitudes with his great TV character, Michael Bluth (Arrested Development), except that he’s not funny and his dark side is much more in evidence. Rebecca Hall, as the initially happy and progressively terrified Robyn, brings a lot of believability into both parts of her role…the happy wife and the scared, pregnant mother-to-be. Egerton really dives into Gordo the Weirdo, being at different moments, innocent, pathetic, scary and calculating. Having grown up as a fan of the Hitchcock brand of suspense as well as being a Noir film lover, this movie was really right up my alley. The action is slow, calculating and relentless, full of clues and false leads, violence and FX is minimal and the Hitchcockean end leaves you with questions that may or may not be answered. One of my tactics in watching a movie like that is to think that, in that situation, I would have behaved better than the characters and hence avoided all of this turmoil. I don’t know if that’s true, but I kept telling myself that until the guys came by to sweep up the popcorn.
