I Love You, My Darling

I Love You, My Darling
Directed by Richard Bevis

WARNING: Contains spoilers.

For a movie that ultimately resolves with a clear understanding of where it was headed, I Love You, My Darling seems confused about what it needs to do to get there. It tries for emotional catharsis and ends up settling for misdirection. What the film needed to do with its first two-thirds was build our understanding of the characters and their relationships, to gradually coalesce into what Bevis was trying for. Instead, it's a muddled, misguided experience, sorely lacking in cohesion and extensively focusing on the wrong things. It's an interesting idea, no doubt, especially as the second outing from a director who's gaining a reputation for ambitious projects. The set design is wonderful, the camera techniques obviously beyond the amateur level seen in so many interesting newbie outings lately. But we knew Bevis was capable of this after The Dance of the Firefly. Darling tried to expand by incorporating emotional resonance, irony, and misdirection, and drops the ball hard.

It's hard to say exactly what went wrong here, and even after a day or two to let it gel in my mind, I'm still struggling to precisely explain why I think it failed. I say it focuses on the wrong things, and I'll elaborate. I Love You, My Darling is ostensibly the story of a married couple spending their final moments on an airplane that is hijacked by a former criminal. Yet the movie is much more interested in two other characters, and works to tell the story from their perspective first (and predominantly). The first character we get dialogue from is the criminal, who makes sinister premonitions about the plan in place, and hopes that his partner won't get nervous and mess it up. Then the film switches to the partner, who is indeed extremely nervous and worried about his outward behavior betraying his inner turmoil. There's also a brief moment with the stewardesses preparing coffee. All told, we get about a minute of screentime and less than a page of dialogue from the couple, who share sly references to "last night" and wonder about the nervous man.

No chemistry, no emotional punch, no meaningful moments. We're essentially told that they're a couple, without the screentime or care to give us a chance to form an understanding of this. There are no subtle moments of affection; their movements are robotic and often strange, as when the man leans over to whisper something to her. His movement is peculiar and at odds with what Bevis probably had in mind (it was the right idea, just poorly executed). The camera pans, is placed at tilted angles, and points at specific things while leaving others offscreen, but never in a way that aids the forming of our relationship with these characters. We needed closeups of the woman's face as she fondly remembers something. We needed a much closer shot of their hands holding. We needed the guy on the left to not hang at the edge of every shot they have together reminding us that couple aren't the focus of the movie despite the fact that they should be.

So when the turnaround moment comes and the criminal stands up and begins the hijacking, there's been no suspense about his plans, so there's no emotional charge to the moment. We're not invested in the couple and haven't spent any time with them in actual affectionate moments, without perpetually being hit over the head with the grinding suspicion of the movie's plot mechanics. We don't have a sense of the environment of the plane, with the camera wandering around and getting distracted while it should've been building a sense of proximity between all the involved parties. About the only thing that does work is the revelation about the nervous man. The moment where the criminal is yelling "Alex!" and the husband is asking for the nervous man's name is tense and competently paced; you can feel the man's guilt and terror about betraying the man sitting next to him before the truth is revealed. But there are no shots of the wife to confirm our suspicions before the twist occurs, and the whole thing is confusing and sorely lacking in the punch it needed. It leaves a sour taste in the viewer's mouth as it seems that Bevis was only truly interested in the ending, and built the rest of the film around it as a necessary evil to pull off his twist.

I'd be remiss not to mention the design and visuals, which at least keep the movie interesting if not compelling. The plane model is excellent in its simplicity, its interior of blues, blacks, and whites keeping the screen nice to look at. The introduction with establishing shots crosscutting with black-screen credits was a good try, though several of the shots could've been a lot better chosen. The final sequence is taut and well-handled; precisely the length it needed to be to give us a rousing, tense, brief moment to ponder what has just happened. Whatever issues I had with Darling, this was the perfect way to end it. If the rest of the film built up to the obvious vision for the ending Bevis had, it would have been fantastic.

Now, I hate to slag a well-built but misguided film. The last time I found myself in this position was Toll Free, and this movie has essentially the same problem: There are no signs that its creator had any doubts about the pacing, the direction, the thematic consistency. Some 3DMM movies can try for something and not quite achieve it - The World Around Igby comes to mind - and still be somewhat engaging and interesting. What bothers me about movies like I Love You, My Darling is the way they're so driven, so confident, plowing unknowingly toward an unfulfilling finale with little care about the broken foundation that is the rest of the experience. The notes Bevis includes in the package made me wince, because they compound the distinct feeling that Darling is completely misguided and lost and doesn't know it. It knows where it's going, but the journey getting there is like a distracted afterthought.

Critical Score: 49/100.
Personal Score: 50/100.

[Aaron Haynes]

I'll follow up by saying that I'm definitely interested in seeing what your next project will be. I think this got lost somewhere along the way, but it was definitely an interesting project idea and I commend you for trying it.

[Richard Bevis]

Thanks Aaron, I realise it's not great but I enjoyed making it . My next project is similar to Firefly. It's a 5 minute short about a boy who escapes the mundane and somewhat violent nature of his home and sets out for the horizon.

[Breed]

Don't limit yourself to the little short flicks, dude. You have much potential, you just gotta get an amazingly fantastic script in your hands to reach it.

I thought this was pretty neat but your other stuff (including movie previews) is constructed better and seemed to even have a better plot, from what I could tell anyway. Whatever happened to those anyway?

[Bown]

My current gripe with the movie is the 'there were politicians on the plane' thing. How could this have been planned for a YEAR? How did they know 'politicians' were gonna be on that EXACT plane? IT'S MADNESS

[Richard Bevis]

They were simply planning an airliner hijack, and the "year" of planning referred to how it was going to be smoothly carried out. Their plane just happened to have politicians on it, and he used them as an example of how he couldn't afford to sit with them because of people like them resulting in him having no money.