A Simple Favor (2018)

"Loneliness probably kills more people than cancer" says a line from a "A Simple Favor". Probably the only trying to sound like "this was deep..." if you look at it after the movie and think how far it goes on what you just seen, and that's why it probably sticks to you. Besides that, this was fun!

Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) is a single mom living in the New York suburbs out of the life insurance of her late husband, dead in a car crash, and who spends her days with a cooking vlog and many parenting activities. Emily (Blake Lively) is the wife of a former success writer, lacking now any new novel ideas, which lets her as main provider for the family working as the PR head for an important fashion house. Therefore, her preference for drowning her daily existence in a Martini glass instead spending more time with her child, for whom she's unsuccessfully looking for a nanny. Lucky her... both kids go to the same school, and in a rainy day, Emily meets Stephanie. Starting with an invitation for a drink and some chit-chat, despite the apparently major difference between the two, we're getting to more often encounters + sharing secrets + Stephanie's offer to take care once in a while of her new best friend's kid. That's the "simple favor" = Emily must leave to Miami for a few days, her husband is in England to his sick mom, so help is needed. All nice and well... until when Emily does not respond anymore, and Stephanie's temporary nanny job seems to take a more permanent turn. The urgency brings the husband back home... police, searching, mystery.

Spoiler alert: Let me move a bit beyond the trailer this time and just say that the disappearance has an expected finale. We have a body. Emily is found dead, drowned this time in a lake, no Martini, but with some injected heroin. The mystery stays alive though. The apparent cause of death is an accident or a suicide. So apparent that we're not even said clearly which of those is considered, and it's obvious that we have more. Or to put it straight, who did it? :) And now the story starts ;) ...

There's some stuff on the plus side that I can't let unchecked. 1. The script and the story - maybe's the reason that we have a novel behind the movie, maybe not, but this was, by far, the best I've seen of this year (not that I've seen many). Let's say that a solid chunk of the mystery is solved somewhere at two thirds of the movie, giving you the feeling that... damn, that's it.... what's left to see? Well, there's more. Maybe not with such a strong twist, but trust me, there's still some story left to tell. 2. The soundtrack - exceptional; same style as Tarantino, Guy Ritchie or the last John Wick of combining the "dedicated score" with songs. As in the trailer we have a selection of French tunes, older or newer, which match perfectly the tone of the movie (I don't know if that connects somehow to "do you want to Diabolique me?" :) another line in the movie said by Stephanie to the just widowed husband, referencing directly the French film). 3. The acting - I must admit a reason that brought me to the cinema being the presence in the cast of both Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively. Objectively speaking, if the first maybe overacted just a bit, I think Blake Lively has here her best role of what I've seen by now ("The Age of Adaline" not included). Maybe the character also helps a bit, being more... complex, let's say, than how it seems initially.

I've read somewhere that "A Simple Favor" can be seen as a more light-hearted version of "Gone Girl", or something like that. It's a pretty good description, although besides the mysterious disappearance + some other common elements about the respective character (no more spoilers), the story evolves quite differently. The cat and mouse game there is a bit different here - first we start with three participants: the wife, the friend/nanny/whatever... and the husband. Second, we have indeed a comic nuance, which often moves towards sarcasm, and which has an excellent effect of keeping the general feeling more towards a relaxed zone a la "Midsomer Murders" meets "Wild Things", compared to Fincher's specific tension from "Gone Girl" where I still remember a shock build-up sequence. You also get here a "stronger" scene at some point but it's not even close to as disturbing the other was. So, overall, again, it was fun! :) + you might learn how to make a real Martini ;)

Rating: 4.5 out of 5