Directed by Joe Wright, The Woman in the Window (2021, on Netflix) seems to have one foot in the 1950s (mainly because of decor) and one foot in the present century. Appropriate, this, because the film owes much to Hitchcock’s Rear Window, and, it could be said, it is the Hitchcockian 1950s it has its foot in.
Cards on the table: I don’t like the screenplay based on a novel by A.J. Finn, but I do relish the brute suspense and Bruno Delbonnel’s intriguing, un-showy cinematography. Amy Adams does very well—she’s relatable and pleasantly forceful—as an agoraphobic child psychologist who witnesses a murder. Gary Oldman, Brian Tyree Henry, et al. are creditable too, and Julianne Moore is a no b.s. master in a small role. The film has a muddled script, but Rear Window is imperfectly written also. Yet Hitchcock’s pic is critically acclaimed and worth seeing. The Woman in the Window, I think, is worth seeing too.
Leave a Reply