Sometimes to get through awards season, you need to indulge in some trash. And boy, is "The Housemaid" premium trash. It's a domestic thriller starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney that covers all the bases - rich people problems, infidelity, psycho bosses, class warfare, a creepy kid, an evil mother-in-law, a sex scene or two, a bit of the old ultraviolence, and finally some sweet revenge.
Directed by Paul Feig and written by Rebecca Sonnenshine, based on the Freida McFadden book, "The Housemaid" follows Millie (Sydney Sweeney), a parolee who is living out of her car, but manages to land a job as a live-in maid for Nina (Amanda Seyfried), who seems to have the perfect life and family. Nina is married to the hunky Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), and mother to a young daughter (Indiana Elle), with another kid on the way. Initially the job seems too good to be true, but then Nina starts showing signs of instability. She's picky and paranoid, lies constantly, often flies into rages, and gives Millie contradictory instructions. As Millie learns more about Nina, the dream job turns into a nightmare.
At first glance, "The Housemaid" is a terrible movie. The characters are paper thin and the twisty plot is ridiculous. Sydney Sweeney continues to display considerable screen presence but not much ability to emote, but Amanda Seyfried more than makes up for it. She's so much fun to watch as the unhinged Nina, playing everything over-the-top. And fortunately, just about everybody else involved seems to be in on the joke. The film never quite tips over into self-aware parody, playing most of the dramatic bits pretty straight, but it's hard to keep a straight face during the cheesy seduction scenes, or the played up cattiness of the neighborhood mom group, or the physical impossibility of fight sequences. Paul Feig and friends know we're here to see the drama and the mess, and are perfectly happy to give it to us. The film's third act abandons all pretense and just runs full tilt into a pile of genre tropes with gleeful abandon. I enjoyed the hell out of "The Housemaid," even though I groaned through the awful dialogue and nutty denouement. I want a sequel immediately.
Now, on to "Pillion," which is the BDSM rom-com written and directed by Harry Lighton, and based on a novel by Adam Mars-Jones. Harry Melling plays Colin, a shy, inexperienced gay man who starts a relationship with a mysterious biker named Ray (Alexander Skarsgaard). Ray introduces Colin to a hardcore BDSM dynamic that essentially involves him taking over Colin's life, but while Colin enjoys this, he also wants more traditional things from the relationship that Ray is averse to. Will the two of them be able to come to a compromise? Will love triumph over their seemingly irreconcilable differences?
Despite being pretty open to what the film was selling, I didn't find "Pillion" very titillating or shocking, and I didn't find it very appealing as a romance. I chalk this up to not being on the same wavelength as the filmmakers in regards to the aesthetics, which is perfectly fine. Bikers and fetish gear don't do anything for me, or the focus on muscles, muscles, and more muscles. Lighton has a good sense of humor about his subject matter, though, and a willingness to let the weird bits just be weird, which I appreciate. However, I was concerned about the depiction of the BDSM activities - the movie goes to extremes very quickly, consent is not clear at all, and neither of the participants seem sure where their boundaries and limits are. This seemed to be another in a long line of problematic film portrayals of BDSM - at least, at first.
Fortunately, this turns out to be the whole point of the story - that Colin and Ray need to sort out what they are and aren't willing to do for each other in order to function as a proper couple. And this aspect of the movie turned out to be much more interesting and satisfying to see play out than any of the kinky business, and ensured that we weren't just getting a gay "Fifty Shades of Gray." Melling and Skarsgaard both play their characters with emotional acuity and sensitivity, and by the end I was genuinely rooting for these two to figure things out. I came away from "Pillion" feeling like I'd really gained something valuable from the experience that I never would have expected going in - a thorough dismantling of several unrealistic and harmful romance tropes.
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