FILM
Lesbian Thriller Lacks Sharpness
Netfl ix’s “I Care a Lot” fails to piece everything together
BY STEVE ERICKSON
“I Care a Lot” doesn’t care
enough to fi gure out what
it’s doing. Director/writer
J Blakeson and its star,
Rosamund Pike, never develop
a point of view on their scammer
anti-hero Marla Grayson. At times,
“I Care a Lot” wants to be a genderfl
ipped version of “The Wolf of Wall
Street,” placing a lesbian in the
position of Jordan Belfort but only
toning down the nastiness and
cynicism a little. It’s also a nightmare
about losing control over
one’s destiny, a tender love story,
and a satire about the intersection
of feminism and capitalism. But it
can’t hang on to any of these ideas
for longer than fi ve minutes.
Grayson is a scammer who uses
the courts to get control over elderly
women’s guardianships in Massachusetts
and gain access to their
For her role as Marla Grayson in “I Care a Lot,” Rosamund Pike won a Golden Globe award for Best
Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
assets. Jennie Peterson (Dianne
Wiest), a woman perfectly capable
of living on her own, is her latest
victim, shuffl ed off to an abusive
nursing home that won’t even
let her walk outside. But unbeknownst
CHRISTOPHER POLK/NBC HANDOUT VIA REUTERS
to Grayson, Peterson has
changed her identity to conceal her
ties to the Russian mafi a. Her son
Roman (Peter Dinklage) discovers
what has happened and sends a
sleazy lawyer, Dean (Chris Messina),
to sue Grayson. She winds up
having to go on the run with her
lover Fran (Eiza González).
“I Care a Lot” begins with a
voice-over from Grayson, in which
she espouses a dog-eat-dog philosophy
and tells us that she started
out poor and had to step on other
people to fi nd her way out. That
voice-over returns near the fi lm’s
end. It lays out a view of American
life as a zero-sum game with
no tolerance for vulnerability or
weakness: “Am I an insider or an
outsider? Am I a lion or lamb? Am
I a predator or prey?” It’s used to
sketch in her background, which
feels necessary because Pike plays
the character as an ice queen
whose only emotions are reserved
for her lover. Both the performance
and script need more nuance to
show how Grayson could order an
elderly woman drugged into submission
and then come home and
embrace Fran.
Grayson’s come-up runs into
resistance from men who may be
sexist jerks but actually have the
moral high ground in this case.
At the beginning, a schlubby guy
who lost control of his mother’s
custody to her calls her a “bitch”
and makes rape and murder
threats. When she meets with
Dean, he constantly misgenders a
doctor, which seems to be a deliberate
microaggression. Some critics
may have made claims for “I
Care a Lot” as a critique of “#girlboss
feminism.” Its fi nal moments
take this strand furthest, but the
fi lm isn’t sharp enough to develop
real satirical bite. It is reluctant to
dig beyond a set of evil characters
towards the system that separates
us into lions and lambs, predators
and prey.
Blakeson has a knack for action
scenes — he does well with one
where an out-of-control car spins
off the road into a lake. But all too
often, he relies on a retro-synth
score to cover the moments without
dialogue. The fi lm is unwilling
to linger too long on its darkest
implications. One could’ve made a
whole movie about the victims of
elder abuse, but they get lost in “I
Care a Lot” because Grayson happened
to accidentally choose one
with real criminal connections.
The mistreatment of Peterson is
never exactly justifi ed, but it’s too
easy to write off all the fi lm’s physical
and emotional violence as horrible
people treating other horrible
people like crap.
Finally, “I Care a Lot” falls victim
to the kind of cheap shot attitude
that thinks giving Grayson
a vaping habit makes her look
more despicable. After more than
20 years of prestige TV defi ned by
male anti-heroes, this fi lm turns
the gender balance around, as
well as drawing on Scorsese and
Adam McKay. But those TV shows
and fi lms, at best, had a perverse
wit and an understanding of the
attraction of charismatic but evil
people. Grayson is just an unpleasant
blank slate who is full
of herself, and, for the most part,
so is everyone else on screen. By
the end, “I Care a Lot” cares most
about setting up its characters
only in order to knock them down,
without giving the audience a reason
why we should feel a thing if
they live or die.
“I CARE A LOT” | Directed by J
Blakeson | Now streaming on Netfl ix
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