It’s been almost seven years since Rosamund Pike—a former Bond girl, Bennet sister, and warrior-queen Andromeda—showed us the full bore of her sly talents in Gone Girl, David Fincher’s sterling film version of Gillian Flynn’s twisty sensation of a novel. Amazing Amy was easily Pike’s best role since she smartly played a dope in An Education: she’s at once your favorite kinda-scary friend and something far more sinister, yet righteous. It’s a heck of a performance, setting Pike’s star to highest burn.
She’s done some interesting things post-Gone Girl—most notably the bleak western Hostiles and mounting another terrific, steely performance in the woefully unheralded A Private War—but Pike hasn’t quite matched the cool blue fire of Amy until her latest film, I Care a Lot, a mean little thriller out on Netflix February 18. Pike has been nominated for a Golden Globe for the performance, but don’t let that turn you off. She is, once again, a stealthy marvel in this movie, cruel and clever. The rest of the film might not meet the heights of its star, but it is still a sleek and compelling standout in an erratic season, anchored by one of the great performances of the year (so far, anyway).
Pike plays Marla Grayson, a con woman who plies her grim trade through the legal system. She insinuates herself into elderly and ailing people’s lives by becoming their court-appointed legal guardian, there ostensibly to make sure these poor souls are receiving proper care and are not being exploited by family members or other opportunists. The horrible joke, of course, is that corrupt carers like Marla—who exist in real life—are sucking dry the resources of these infirm people trapped in a bureaucratic hell from which there is little recourse.
Perhaps I Care a Lot will gain some extra attention in light of the recent debate over Framing Britney Spears, a New York Times television special (available on Hulu) that delineates the strictures of the pop star’s binding conservatorship. I Care a Lot does concern similar troubling issues, but it’s much more satire than sober depiction of societal ill. Writer-director J Blakeson may gesture toward a grander meaning at times—but those moments are when the film is at its baggiest and most clichéd, straining for wicked profundity to lift itself up out of the genre muck. The muck, really, is plenty fine.
The film works best as an amoral caper, reveling in the fallout after Marla preys on the wrong older lady. Retired business woman Jennifer (Dianne Wiest) seems like the perfect mark: She’s got a big, beautiful house, lots of money in the bank, and seemingly no family members. Of course, there is more to Jennifer than meets the eye, a inconvenient fact that Marla discovers as I Care a Lot veers into chaos and danger.
Blakeson directs with panache, staging a couple of nimble set pieces that I suppose you could call action sequences. The writing is sharp, though some stuff about Marla being a lioness among a flock of lambs is wheezy, and some of the introduction to Marla’s world of grift and accomplices is maybe a little too on-the-nose.
But Pike pretty much sells it all. She is committed to Marla’s awfulness; never once does she try to shade the character in a more sympathetic tone. She lets Marla’s defensive feminist posturing—coopting the language of social justice to wriggle out of culpability, or worse—stand for the manipulation it is. This isn’t to say that we don’t perversely root for Marla—who is, in almost all ways, a terrible person. Her discomfiting appeal is part of the point, and is teased out keenly by Pike and Blakeson. There’s something satisfying about a nefarious little machine whirring along as it’s supposed to; America sort of depends on that thrill.
At times, I Care a Lot overindulges in archness. Peter Dinklage plays Marla’s main antagonist, and while he brings the appropriate smooth menace to the role, the trappings surrounding his character are goofy. Marla’s details occasionally risks caricature, too, what with her tight bob and enormous vape pen and crisp power suits so obviously signifying evil. Sometimes I Care a Lot’s flash gets in the way of its simpler pleasures. Still, Pike charges through—vaping the house down, disarmingly in command of her bulldozer of a character. It’s a joy to watch her do her thing, even if that thing is very bad. Pike earns far more than mere care—she’s ready for diehard fandom.
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