Easily the most stylish mystery in ages, A Simple Favor is a beguiling look at the dark secrets in modern relationships. Cast in vibrant hues, the film rejoices in shapes and colors we don't normally associate with the genre, making everything appear at once Instagram-ready. It's a deceptive tactic, those candy-colored extremes, because this film is as noir as they come. In fact, it doesn't take long for the expletives to fly and for the first love-making scene that reveals an unusually hot scene of incest.
Are we moving too fast? Let's back it up.
Anna Kendrick plays Stephanie Smothers, the aptly-named perfect single mother. Immaculately (if gaudily) dressed, always attentive and hardworking, juggling her son with her housewife-themed vlog and all her various voluntary activities. All the other "moms" (including Andrew Rannells) hate her; all, that is, except the one who's never around. That would be Emily (played by Bake Lively), a powerful PR exec from urban glamour. The two women become unlikely friends, starting out a little rocky but escalating quickly to interdependence. Stephanie loves Emily's beautiful life, beautiful clothes, beautiful husband (Henry gorgeous Golding); Emily loves (or at least appears to) Stephanie's cutesy style, hardworking babysitting of their respective sons, and weakness for confessing under the influence.
Sound spooky? Exactly. In what at first seems to be a comedy of manners and clashing lifestyles, the film establishes a rolling banter, a magnificent sort of comedic timing laced with bloodthirsty jabs that I almost want to watch the other comedies that made director Paul Feig famous. However, he did not write this expertly crafted mystery-thriller. That glory belongs solely with Jessica Sharzer of American Horror Story and Nerve fame. Here she has crafted a mystery that, though often feeling familiar in the age of Gillian Flynn and countless crime procedurals, rises above the morass by delving deep into the anxieties between friendship and selfishness in the age of social media.
And while the story's engaging, the performers at their best, and the energy intoxicating, it is the style of this film that remains embedded in mind's eye. Gorgeous costumes that make you want to be the characters and be with the characters. Picture-perfect lives in pristine houses. Gorgeous jazzy French music. Sexy and not afraid of its hidden horrors. Self-knowing and aware of its own manipulations, so much so that it might be laughing at itself or laughing at us, knowing that we're hopelessly caught up in its glorious decadence.
IMDb: A Simple Favor
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