In the expansive Wyoming desert circa 1977, a young woman poses for photographer Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto), and our first glimpse of her is via his camera lens. It’s an ostensibly unassuming image, and yet it’s one that speaks pointedly to the gender-specific issues (of sight, beauty, performance and self-worth) at the heart of Woman of the Hour. This film, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, is director/star Anna Kendrick’s compact and cutting portrait of Rodney, who became infamous for appearing on The Dating Game while in the midst of a years-long rape and murder spree. A true-crime thriller that also operates as a damning commentary on societal misogyny—especially in Hollywood—it’s as chillingly sharp and canny as its deranged fiend.
Kendrick exhibits astute directorial instincts from the opening moments of Woman of the Hour, when Rodney approaches his model to sensitively console her over recent heartbreak, strokes her hair and neck, and then twice tries to put his hand around her throat—an act that causes her to withdraw, stare at Rodney and down the hill, and briefly consider her situation as a defenseless woman with a stranger in the godforsaken middle of nowhere. It’s a momentary pause before the brutality, and an early sign that Kendrick cares about her characters as more than merely pawns on a bloody chessboard. Moreover, it demonstrates her preoccupation with the unspoken but powerfully felt dynamics that govern relationships between men and women, especially when it comes to the former’s pressure-filled demands (for sex, warmth, companionship, acquiescence) and the latter’s feeling that they’re obligated to cater to those needs.
Rodney’s reign of terror is presented episodically in Woman of the Hour, be it in Wyoming, California, or Los Angeles, where he temporarily worked at the Los Angeles Times and, in the film, attempts to lure a young gay colleague to the beach, only to be thwarted by a police interview that makes everyone extremely wary of him. Concurrently, it picks up with aspiring actress Cheryl Bradshaw (Kendrick) as she suffers through another failed audition, this time with two casting directors who care more about discussing movies than watching her. The only thing they are concerned about is whether Cheryl will do nudity, and when she says no, one of them opines (about her breasts), “I’m sure they’re fine.” Sexism is alive and well in the 1978 West Coast entertainment industry, where—even more than in everyday American life—women are expected to adhere to certain objectifying standards of beauty and behavior.
Things aren’t better back at Cheryl’s L.A. apartment, where her only friend is a fellow wannabe thespian who bristles at Cheryl uncomfortably laughing in response to his putting her hair behind her ear. Conditioned to please men by her profession (and culture), Cheryl smooths things out by sleeping with him, only to regret prioritizing his desires over her own. Despite the fact that it’s a ditzy show that represents all she ostensibly dislikes, Cheryl accepts an offer to appear on The Dating Game, where she’s promptly given a new, more flattering dress, and told to flash her fetching smile, by the show’s host (Tony Hale), another man who presumes to tell females how to look and perform. Asked to play along with the program’s inane questions (full of sexualized puns and double entendres), Cheryl instead takes the advice of two make-up artists and chooses to have fun in her way, rewriting her queries and, consequently, reclaiming her agency.
Empowerment, however, doesn’t equate to actual power, especially physically, and Woman of the Hour wields its based-on-a-true-story scenario for considerable suspense. Much of that is due to Kendrick’s use of empty spaces and deadly silence to heighten the menacing mood, as well as her understanding that men know how to take advantage of their gender positions to get women to do what they want—be it venturing off alone to the desert with them or letting them into their homes. Beneath its surface, the film is a roiling look at how the battle of the sexes plays out on a day-to-day basis, especially in La La Land, where appearances are everything and exploitation is as routine as rejection.
Though Kendrick’s Cheryl is the material’s nominal protagonist, Woman of the Hour (smartly written by Ian MacAllister McDonald) equally revolves around Rodney, who’s embodied by Zovatto as an outwardly charismatic guy who knows all the right things to say (including on television), but whose consideration and compassion carry with them a whiff of something rancid—as do the braggy references to Days of Heaven and Roman Polanski that he makes to impress and disarm his targets. Like his own smile, which is missing a rear tooth, Rodney is uglier than he initially seems, and Zovatto turns him into a creepy charmer. The patient sequences between him and his victims are the film’s standouts, infused with inevitable dread that’s bolstered by Kendrick’s recognition that there’s nothing scarier than the moments when danger is obviously imminent but hasn’t yet struck.
While her The Dating Game scenes are mildly campy, Kendrick only seeks laughs at boorish men’s expense, and a subplot involving an audience member (Nicolette Robinson) who identifies Rodney as her friend’s killer succinctly underlines the tale’s censure of ubiquitous misogyny. Things crescendo in a late-night studio parking lot that’s eerily similar to the desert wastelands that Rodney uses as his killing fields. Throughout, Kendrick shrewdly moves backwards and forwards in time to hint at her true finale, in which a runaway (Autumn Best)—based on the real-life Monique Hoyt—finds herself in mortal peril and flips the script on Rodney by doing what men so often do to women: manipulate him by preying on his wants, needs and insecurities.
At a concise 89 minutes, the film moves at a brisk clip, and its larger notions come across as natural outgrowths of its action. Kendrick is her usual captivating self as Cheryl but it’s her directorial work that’s most assured. With her poised visual compositions generating unease and reinforcing her thematic preoccupations, the actress proves to be as comfortable behind the camera as she is in front of it. In the process, Woman of the Hour suggests that, cute big-screen persona notwithstanding, she might have a bright future in scary movies.
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