I Care A Lot
This jet-black comedy thriller will not be to everyone’s tastes, but there’s so much to enjoy in this darkly amoral satire. Peter Dinklage, Eiza González and Dianne Wiest are fantastic in supporting roles, but the film absolutely belongs to Rosamund Pike and her mesmerising central performance.
Premise: Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) has a great scam going: she gets a corrupt doctor to certify that elderly patients are no longer mentally capable of looking after themselves, and then persuades a gullible judge to appoint Marla as their guardian, giving her complete control over their lives – and all of their assets. But when Marla chooses a rich woman with no family (Dianne Wiest) as her latest target, she has no idea what she’s getting herself involved in.
Review:
Black comedies are not to everyone’s taste, and I Care A Lot is about as black as they come. Think American Psycho levels of dark social satire, but with the added relevance that this is very much set in today’s America, and can’t be dismissed as an 80s set period piece.
Like Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman, Rosamund Pike’s Marla Grayson is an absolute monster. When we first meet Marla, she’s in court defending herself against the son of one of her “wards”, who not only claims that his mother didn’t need to be made a ward of the State, but also that Marla is only in this to get her hands on his mother’s house, and that she has unlawfully prevented him from even visiting his mother in the care home that Marla has forced her into. By the end of the court hearing, Marla has the judge (Isiah Whitlock Jr) so wrapped around her finger that he finds in Marla’s favour after being convinced that the son has been wilfully neglecting his mother’s needs in order to avoid spending “his inheritance” on her care. She is, quite frankly, a nasty and completely amoral piece of work.
“…Rosamund Pike never tries to make the audience “like” Marla, but she allows the audience understand her instead…”
But Marla wouldn’t be able to carry the film – and the audience – with her if she was just a two-dimensional pantomime villain. So instead Rosamund Pike makes Marla’s point of view clear from the start – she doesn’t see herself as evil or what she’s doing as wrong, but rather, America is run by those who don’t play by the rules, and you have a simple choice: be a lamb and play by the rules and let the system keep you down, or be a lion, play by your own rules, and maybe one day you’ll amass enough power and money to enjoy real freedom. Rosamund Pike never tries to make the audience “like” Marla (and arguably, she’s a fundamentally unlikeable character, and even her most redeeming qualities aren’t enough to change that), but instead, she tries to make the audience understand Marla, which is a different thing entirely.
Speaking of redeeming qualities, Marla’s only one is arguably her relationship with her girlfriend (and co-conspirator in the guardianship scam) Fran, played by Eiza González. Eiza González is great in this role, playing a more grounded character than the femme fatale roles that she’s often cast in. As Fran (who, based on her connections, appears to be an ex-cop), Eiza González acts as Marla’s investigator, confidant, sounding board and, at times, conscience, but never in a way that feels forced. While it’s clear that Fran is, to an extent, under Marla’s spell like everyone else (so that she agrees to things she might not have agreed to without Marla’s influence), it’s also clear that Marla genuinely loves Fran, and that their relationship isn’t just part of Marla’s scam. There are moments of real tenderness and affection between Marla and Fran, but they are only ever there to flesh out Marla’s psyche, rather than as an attempt to make excuses for her character.
“…it’s genuinely quite scary watching how the scam unfolds with ruthless efficiency…”
Plot wise, the film really kicks off when Marla’s corrupt doctor friend identifies Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest) as a “cherry” – a rich elderly retiree with plenty of assets and no living family left to object to the State appointed guardianship. It’s genuinely quite scary watching how the scam unfolds with ruthless efficiency: using the corrupt doctor’s fake dementia diagnosis, Marla is able to convene an emergency court hearing without Jennifer’s knowledge or involvement, at which the naïve judge is persuaded of the need to appoint Marla as Jennifer’s guardian. The first Jennifer knows of this is when Marla shows up unannounced at her door with a court order and the police, and within minutes Jennifer is whisked away, stripped of her mobile phone and left in a secure care home (run by another of Marla’s corrupt co-conspirators) with no means of contacting the outside world without her new guardian’s permission. Marla then immediately starts auctioning off Jennifer’s personal belongings and puts her house on the market, all in order to pay Marla’s extortionate fees for her guardianship “services”. It is a truly frightening scenario, and one that feels all too believable.
From there, we start to enter spoiler territory, but suffice to say that Jennifer is not quite as easy a mark as Marla first believed. Dianne Wiest is great in the role of Jennifer, portraying her initial sense of confusion, shock and despair, before that starts to give way to something else entirely. If I had one minor nitpick to make about I Care A Lot, it’s that Dianne Wiest is so good, her absence from the final act is noticed, as the film’s focus moves away from her storyline and onto other developments.
“…the film is unquestionably powered by Rosamund Pike’s pitch black performance…”
Those other plot developments largely centre on Peter Dinklage’s character, who I can’t say too much about other than to say that he becomes (at least from Marla’s perspective) the film’s main antagonist. What’s interesting about the clash between Rosamund Pike’s and Peter Dinklage’s characters is that neither of them can be described as “good” people, and so the audience is asked to consider where its sympathies lie between two inherently “bad” people.
The escalation in the final act may stretch credibility, but it’s such a joy to watch, I’m more than willing to suspend my disbelief. Marla is mesmerising whenever she’s on screen, but her scenes with Peter Dinklage’s character, and her clashes with Chris Messina’s high-priced lawyer, are particular highlights. There isn’t a weak link in the cast, but the film is unquestionably powered by Rosamund Pike’s pitch black performance.
“…Rosamund Pike manages to make a completely detestable & amoral character utterly compelling…”
Whilst I have a very minor quibble about the final scenes of the film, and as I mentioned, it also feels like the film loses track of Dianne Wiest’s character’s storyline in the third act, writer/director J Blakeson still deserves a lot of credit for putting together such an engaging, entertaining, and original film, and I Care A Lot marks him out as someone to watch out for in the future.
All in all, this pitch black comedy is right on the cusp of 5-stars, and if you’re a fan of dark satires like American Psycho or 2005’s criminally underrated Thank You For Smoking, then you may even feel this deserves that fifth star. The film is carried by Rosamund Pike’s central performance, which has already been nominated for a Golden Globe and which is arguably her best yet (even better than Gone Girl), because it manages to make a completely detestable and amoral character utterly compelling, without ever falling into the clichés of providing the character with a backstory which excuses her behaviour, or a sentimental redemption arc.
