Toxic female friendships have not infrequently come in for a good, hard, if specious look in cinema. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of these films have opted for the horror/thriller route, sometimes putting a spin on the home invasion idea (i.e. Single White Female) and sometimes going a step further, having a woman infiltrate the life of another woman who is, for whatever reason, doing a better job of nailing those social rites of passage, which are more often than not still marriage and motherhood: from The Hand That Rocks The Cradle to The Stylist, beware the woman who doesn’t have it all. So Homewrecker (2019) is certainly a film which springs from that stock, but it does do a few things rather differently. Firstly, it opts to retain a certain level of black humour, at least until its ‘throw everything at it’ final act. It also manipulates at least some of the ‘unhinged women’ norms, even if quite subtly, so that it hangs on to a few surprises along the way, although these come at a cost: ultimately, this does all boil down to two women fighting over something which hardly seems worth having, and any finer points about this, or female friendship generally, get rather lost in the mix.
Anyway, we start by seeing a couple of ladies clearly getting their memberships’ worth out of the gym: thirtysomething and, as it turns out, interior designer Michelle (Alex Essoe) gets chatting to another gym member, fiftysomething Linda (Precious Chong) after a class one day. Let’s make no bones about it, things seem a tad off with Linda from the start; her rather manic befriending style is a shock to the system for Michelle, who has a lot to think about currently: she’s been trying, and so far failing, to have a baby with husband Robert, but his rather distant attitude is giving her second thoughts anyway: is it a good idea to essentially sign yourself up to a lifelong contract with a man who can’t even look pleased to be in a coupley picture on your desktop wallpaper? Maybe this is why she finds herself opening up to the older, maybe wiser woman, who seems to be taking a rather wide-eyed interest in her wellbeing. And, when Linda suggests that Michelle might like to take a look at her place with a view to doing it up, Michelle finds it impossible to refuse.
The film therefore sets out its stall very early on: unhappy younger woman finds herself stuck in the home of an older woman with apparent issues. Linda seems to be stuck in the time period where she was at her happiest and most optimistic (which of course is the late eighties/early nineties; how else are you going to fix the camera on the now indie-film staple of a VHS recorder?) and, in the here and now, she seems to have buried herself in a mire of motivational quotes and fridge-magnet philosophy about sisters doing it for themselves. Outside of that, she reveals that she’s been unlucky in love herself, and takes a keen interest in Michelle’s own situation, imposing upon her unwitting guest by trying to opt in as her best friend, demanding heart-to-hearts and so on. Some of the lighter-touch dialogue in the early acts of the film showcase the script at its best and most observant, though I did find Linda’s overblown body language and eye contact a little too cartoonish, and it felt as though the film could have gone in one of two directions – fully cartoonish, or increasingly serious. Actually, though, it does largely try to do both for the most part, splicing a few increasingly violent scenes with downtime which ups the dialogue, even if doing this to add in a few twists and turns. Still, Alex Essoe, probably best known to the likes of people who read this website as ‘her out of Starry Eyes’ gets put through the wringer here, too, but she does have form for being put through an ordeal in order to discover her authentic self, and this aspect of the film works best of all for me. Also, where the film pauses to focus on the interaction between Michelle and Linda, the characterisation improves overall, becoming more intimate.
Homewrecker certainly has its moments, though it is hamstrung by budgetary constraints and its tendency to skate the line between humour and serious point/content – to the extent that, if it ever did purport to really say something about female relationships, or loneliness, or love, then it doesn’t quite get there, and relies on a few reductive assumptions of its own, too. The final act is a sink or swim decision for the whole film; I felt that it just about held together, but its patchwork approach wasn’t overall to my liking and it reverts to tried-and-tested fare at its close which may smack of overfamiliarity.
Homewrecker (2018) is available now on VOD via 101 Films.