This story is basically: Mr. Ripley meets Parasite meets Call Me By Your Name. The main character is Oliver, a shy young man that begins a friendship with the coolest guy in his college, Felix, handsome, rich, sociable, lovable. Felix invites him into his home and then a lot of bad things happen as Oliver becomes more and more obsessed with him.
Mr. Ripley is the closest comparison. The story of the movie basically follows a nobody and his love/hate towards this perfect guy. This is the second Emerald Fennell movie and... well... overall it's not a step down or a step up from Promising Young Woman. It definitely looks really good, has good pacing and it keeps you entertained. The performances are all good, but the best one is probably Jacob Elordi, who turns his character surprisingly likable. The reason why I don't think Keoghan is the best is because, while he definitely does a lot of different things acting-wise, his character is too indecipherable overall. And that's a problem with the writing.
Fennell has a problem with self-indulging in her own coolness and her own ideas, and ultimately tries to pull off a movie that is very undecided in what it wants to be. It's not a homoerotic story all that much, because the homoerotic attraction only exists one way and sometimes doesn't even feel important. It wants to be a super evil noir where the main character does awful things to get what he wants, but his motivations are not well defined, cause it's neither pure love/hate nor desire for money. Oliver is stumbling on his own words to get his story straight in one scene, and in the other he is a calm and collected psycho. The fact that we don't get to see the wheels spinning in the main character's head, that we don't really know him, is the movie's worst flaw. We know he's doing all of these things because it's obvious, but we don't see him arrive at that point psychologically. He just does them off-screen, and at one point I thought there would be a total unresolved ambiguity (did he do it? Did he really do it?), but then the twist reveal at the end basically explains it to death. It was probably one of the worst twist-explanation I've seen. It's completely unnecessary, and the way it happens is so cartoon-villain-y for no reason. And the ending scene - well, there was a lot to see, I can't complain - but it's also a really strange scene that really clashes with the tone and flattens everything. So what I'm saying is that Emerald Fennell needs to write better characters, and MOST IMPORTANTLY better endings.
Mr. Ripley is the closest comparison. The story of the movie basically follows a nobody and his love/hate towards this perfect guy. This is the second Emerald Fennell movie and... well... overall it's not a step down or a step up from Promising Young Woman. It definitely looks really good, has good pacing and it keeps you entertained. The performances are all good, but the best one is probably Jacob Elordi, who turns his character surprisingly likable. The reason why I don't think Keoghan is the best is because, while he definitely does a lot of different things acting-wise, his character is too indecipherable overall. And that's a problem with the writing.
Fennell has a problem with self-indulging in her own coolness and her own ideas, and ultimately tries to pull off a movie that is very undecided in what it wants to be. It's not a homoerotic story all that much, because the homoerotic attraction only exists one way and sometimes doesn't even feel important. It wants to be a super evil noir where the main character does awful things to get what he wants, but his motivations are not well defined, cause it's neither pure love/hate nor desire for money. Oliver is stumbling on his own words to get his story straight in one scene, and in the other he is a calm and collected psycho. The fact that we don't get to see the wheels spinning in the main character's head, that we don't really know him, is the movie's worst flaw. We know he's doing all of these things because it's obvious, but we don't see him arrive at that point psychologically. He just does them off-screen, and at one point I thought there would be a total unresolved ambiguity (did he do it? Did he really do it?), but then the twist reveal at the end basically explains it to death. It was probably one of the worst twist-explanation I've seen. It's completely unnecessary, and the way it happens is so cartoon-villain-y for no reason. And the ending scene - well, there was a lot to see, I can't complain - but it's also a really strange scene that really clashes with the tone and flattens everything. So what I'm saying is that Emerald Fennell needs to write better characters, and MOST IMPORTANTLY better endings.
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