Anna Kendrick on a televised games show as a part of her directorial debut 'Woman of the Hour' (2023).

Woman of the Hour (2023) Review

Anna Kendrick on a televised games show as a part of her directorial debut 'Woman of the Hour' (2023).

Woman of the Hour (2023)
Director: Anna Kendrick
Screenwriter: Ian McDonald
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Daniel Zavatto, Nicholette Robinson, Autumn Best, Kathryn Gallagher, Pete Holmes, Tony Hale

During Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut Woman of the Hour, serial killer Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zavatto) talks his potential next victim Cheryl Bradshaw (Anna Kendrick) into getting drinks with him following their appearance on the game show ‘The Dating Game.’ Cheryl, a struggling actress who can barely afford rent, goes on the show because her agent insists it would put her on the map and get her seen by the public. 

“Did you feel seen?” Rodney asks her, his gaze penetrating and unnerving. 

After a moment Cheryl responds, “I felt looked at.”

The distorted lens through which men view women is at the heart of Netflix’s Woman of the Hour, an intimate and refreshingly restrained crime drama based on the real-life story of mass murderer and sex offender Rodney Alcala, who was convicted of killing five women in California between 1977 and 1979. However, as the film tells us, the true extent of his violent crimes remains unknown. Authorities estimate he may have killed upwards of 130 people. In recounting his West Coast crime spree, Kendrick centers much of the film around the inner lives of his victims – those who were lucky enough to escape and those who were not – and, in doing so, subverts genre expectations and confronts our morbid fascination with true crime. In Kendrick’s capable hands, Woman of the Hour is a thoughtful examination of the mundane and horrific violence men inflict upon women every day, as well as the institutions that allow them to get away with it.

Despite recent trends indicating an uptick in true crime consumption – according to Edison Research, true crime is the fourth most popular podcast genre in the U.S. – our fascination with death and our ability to find entertainment and catharsis in violence and murder is nothing new. Consider our lingering obsession with infamous serial killers Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac Killer, or alleged murderers like Elizabeth Báthory, whose stories have produced endless amounts of speculation and conspiracy theories for decades. Take a look at any Victorian-era newspaper and you’re bound to find sensationalized stories of murder and mayhem that were, more often than not, highly fictionalized and exploitative, serving as entertainment for a deeply repressed society. We haven’t evolved much in the centuries since; we’ve simply exchanged Penny Dreadfuls for podcasts, YouTube videos, and the seemingly endless string of true crime documentaries you can find while scrolling streaming platforms. Girls recount the gruesome details of real-life massacres while doing their makeup and producers like Ryan Murphy create biographical anthologies like ‘Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story’ that quench our thirst for the macabre, often without much thought to the real-life victims or their families.

Woman of the Hour does not indulge in this sensationalism. Instead, Kendrick, and screenwriter Ian McDonald, put their focus on the women whose lives were forever altered by meeting Rodney, paying specific attention to how he manipulates his victims into trusting him. The first scene of the film opens on a frame within a frame. Rodney is taking photos of a woman named Sarah (Kelley Jakle) in Wyoming in 1977. In the lens of his camera, Rodney flatters Sarah, calls her beautiful, and gets her to open up to him. The picturesque mountain backdrop is completely blurred, with Sarah as the focal point. Zavatto, whose previous film roles include bit parts in Lady Bird and It Follows, shifts seamlessly from charming to dangerous, his eyes clouding over with darkness instantly. It’s disturbing to see that mask slip, but it’s also so easy to see why someone would be taken with him. In Rodney’s gaze, Sarah sees herself the way he wants her to, but it isn’t long before a brush of skin against her neck turns violent and he strangles her to death.

The act of looking is a main theme in Woman of the Hour. Under Kendrick’s direction and with Zach Kuperstein’s cinematography, the camera often frames its female characters, and even Rodney himself, through reflective surfaces like mirrors or camera lenses. This voyeurism showcases the many ways women are looked at every day, but never actually seen; images to be consumed instead of real people. The moment of their deaths is often framed in a long shot, the camera lingering on the scenery or sunlight reflected off a skylight, creating a sense of serene quiet that is deeply unsettling. Rodney’s obsession with taking photos of his victims is juxtaposed with the probing television camera on ‘The Dating Game,’ and the leering gaze of two producers who flippantly ask if Cheryl is okay with nudity during an audition. She says no, but the producers wave her off. “I’m sure they’re great,” one of them says, clearly indicating her breasts.

Woman of the Hour is less interested in the inner workings of its serial killer’s mind than it is in exploring the many ways women face violence every day, on an individual level and by society at large, and how they’re forced to twist themselves into being as inoffensive as possible to stave off further violence. The film subtly draws parallels between Rodney’s behavior and the behavior of other men in the film in an attempt to highlight how normalized and systemic it is. It isn’t a coincidence that Rodney tells his victims that they’re beautiful, the same way that Cheryl’s neighbor Terry (Pete Holmes) does, right before he hits on her and grows distant and angry when she rejects him. Cheryl reacts to this switch the way women are conditioned to: to brush it off and act like it didn’t actually make her that uncomfortable. Kendrick as an actress shines in these moments, when she smiles wide, but her eyes betray her, revealing both fear and pain. Kendrick has always excelled in roles that call for being quirky, self-deprecating, and relatable – Woman of the Hour plays to those strengths, but Kendrick always manages to get at something much deeper than that.

When the host of ‘The Dating Game’, Ed Burke (Tony Hale), based on real-life host Jim Lange, sees Cheryl in her dressing room before the show, he wastes no time dehumanizing her, first telling her how beautiful she looks and following it up with criticizing certain aspects of her appearance. He then tells her to go easy on the three contestants competing for her affections. Don’t come across too smart, don’t ask any difficult questions – men are babies, after all. Shot with Kendrick looking at Ed through her reflection in the mirror, the pain Cheryl tries to hide is palpable. She listens, she pacifies, she smiles. Kendrick’s ability to laugh while looking like she’s going to cry is a testament to her skill, and while she clearly tries to give equal time and energy to each of Rodney’s victims, her performance still manages to stand out from the rest.

In her essay collection “Second Words: Selected Critical Prose, 1960-1982”, Margaret Atwood wrote about a time she asked a male friend of hers why men feel threatened by women. He replied, “They’re afraid women will laugh at them” and “undercut their worldview.” Then, Atwood asked some women in the poetry seminar she was hosting why women feel threatened by men. Atwood wrote that they responded with, “They’re afraid of being killed.” Woman of the Hour confronts this reality in a measured and thoughtful way. Its violence is disguised by flattering words and soft caresses, by crass humor and casual misogyny.

A strong directorial debut from Kendrick, Woman of the Hour conveys the everyday anxiety of moving through the world as anything other than white, straight, and male, and the never-ending sense of being looked at but never really seen.

Score: 19/24


























Rating: 3 out of 5.

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