Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Blake Lively, Anna Kendrick, Henry Golding, Glenda Braganza, Andrew Rannells, Dustin Milligan, Danielle Bourgon, Gia Sandhu, Zack Smadu, Andrew Moodie, Sugenja Sri, Rupert Friend, Bashir Salahuddin, Eric Johnson, Linda Cardellini, Paul Jurewisc, Sarah Baker, Jean Smart, Roger Dunn, Nicole Peters, Lauren Peters.
The ones that profess they know everything about their best friend are often the ones more put out by the reveal of a past motive or event they had no idea was played out, the shock further enhanced when someone else shares a secret memory and the smile of knowledge with your best friend. It is in the illusion of best friend pursuit that we hold our own sense of identity, it is the hook we hold onto when all around us is crumbling, when the good times need to be shared, perhaps exploited.
What starts out as A Simple Favour asked between two friends can often lead to exploitation, the dominance of one person in any relationship can often be viewed as such, an errand here, the courtesy of indulgence there, a favour can be seen as the stepping stone of a power game, of intended platonic love, and it is in this that Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick use the power of approval to great effect.
Dominance in a relationship never ends well, it is like the playground bully being surrounded by the weak minded but clever with their fists, the security of approval, of validation in their own actions, always paramount, it is how a tyrant works, how someone who has one fact on you can use it to their own will, leaving it hanging in the wind in the fear that one day it can be used against you, to bring you down.
A Simple Favour may seem a little stretched at times, certain moments in the film that have been used in earlier, and far better, movies seem to strangle the life out of what is in effect a well-paced and entertaining piece of cinema, but the niggles persist, the cheeriness of Anna Kendrick’s Stephanie Smothers is quite often grating, a feel of Stepford Wives initially coming through, making it difficult to feel empathy for her situation until she turns detective.
It is in Blake Lively that the film carries its weight with, the psychopathic tendencies always bubbling under the seams, and when used in conjunction with the excellent Linda Cardellini’s portrayal of a bitter and resentful artist, used by friendship, destroyed by her own feelings of worth, then the film holds up for the picture it was intended to be, wonderfully vicious, the creeping feeling of hostility and latent fear always in the background, one that comes through with the same brilliance as shown by Robert Mitchum in the classic 1955 film, Night of the Hunter or in the Bridget Fonda/Jennifer Jason Leigh picture, Single White Female.
A satisfying film, but one with an edge that doesn’t quite sit well, the fear of the unravelling of a person psyche not quite catching the drift of the moments where humour seems to want to join in and take the script in a different direction. Nothing in life is just A Simple Favour, nothing comes without a price.
Ian D. Hall