Film review: Blink Twice (plus ticket giveaway)

Try as a filmmaker might, one’s background will influence how they approach a story. I say a filmmaker, but I mean any kind of artist. A work that is etched in the social fabric from whence it came from cannot help being influenced by the artist’s own experience with the subject. There’s a famous video where Denzel Washington explains culture to a radio host giving the example that Spielberg could probably make Goodfellas and Scorsese maybe would do an ok job with Schindler’s List, “but there are cultural differences”.

I bring this up because I found myself thinking about the idea of culture in a film like Blink Twice. It’s impossible to gloss over the fact this is the debut feature of Zoe Kravitz, actress, model, and daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet. And this is important because the enticing unattainable lifestyle of the rich and privileged is at the heart of the beginning of Blink Twice, and is where Kravitz’ confidence shows up. The culture makes it.

The story follows Frida (Naomi Ackie), perpetually broke young millennial with dreams of higher plains, as she crashes the party of reformed billionaire Slater (Channing Tatum) with her equally broke flatmate Jess (Alia Shawkat). Frida easily charms Slater until the two are invited to his notorious private island, home to many a-mythic lavish and opulent parties. Things are more relaxed nowadays, after Slater was accused of bullying, and he’s laying low with some friends in paradise, save for a nightly indulging on recreational drugs. Frida and Jesse seemingly fit in with the group, even over the jealous looks of Sarah (Adria Arjona), another socialite.

Frida quickly realises something is wrong. Memory of each night is foggy at best, inexistant at worse, but marks in their skin and dirt under the nails, are little pieces of puzzle that she may be too reluctant to explore, or risk ending their perfect getaway.

Without spoiling much, the film does a great job at keeping the mystery fresh until the grand reveal – and even then it comes early enough to give time for the girls to act on it. If the first two acts are enticing, if strangely eerie, the final act has time to breathe into an all-out cathartic apocalypse driven by unapologetic rage.

Kravitz is the star of her own film, even if she doesn’t appear in it. There are so many interesting visual ideas that feel both lurid and exploitative – and I say that with the utmost admiration. Even if I found part of the resolution on the wrong side of silly, there is enough pulsating energy that could only come from a filmmaker with an almost insane drive to be heard. There were probably better ways of dealing with this subject matter, but Kravitz’s inexperience and ingenuity adds an element of urgency to it that, for example, something like Promising Young Woman didn’t have.

The problem is the elements Kravitz doesn’t understand. The reach her culture cannot grasp. Frida and Jess are young millennials struggling to pay the rent – at the start of the film they discuss difficulties paying the rent, before going to their underpaid job as waitresses for a catering company. What does Kravitz understand about struggling to pay the rent? It feels like something small, but those differences permeate into how people talk and relate to others in other social status. There is a rift between the two worlds, and at the start I thought that difference would be at the crux of the film’s mystery.

It isn’t. It’s all just patriarchy – which feels incomplete, because you can’t analyse that without approaching how money and status is also at the root of that power.

And that’s where Kravitz faults. Aesthetically, her ideas make perfect sense. Ackie is amazing in it, bringing so much strength to a performance that could have easily been about weakness. And there is an irrefutable coolness to it – like Get Out and Promising Young Woman’s estranged sister. But there’s also the feeling that someone only half-watched a Pasolini film and didn’t quite get it.

Culture is what gives Blink Twice strength, and also where it fails. It’s a lurid exploitation flick with a ridiculous twist but a cathartic ending. But it bites off more than it can chew. It could have been an opportunity for self-awareness – and one that would have made the ending vastly more entertaining.

Verdict: 2.5 out of 5
For cool millennials, selective on their socially awareness: ‘Yass Queens’ who are also landlords.

Ticket giveaway – Midas Man

LSJ and Transmission Films have 5 double passes to offer for the upcoming musical drama Midas Man.

When Brian Epstein (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) set foot in the Cavern Club in November 1961 to watch The Beatles perform, he saw something no one else could – a glimmer of gold. Sharply dressed and well-spoken, Brian was hardly the most obvious radical – but being Jewish, closeted and having grown up as an outsider who had failed at pretty much everything, he was a 26-year old with something to prove and who wanted to tear up the rulebook. In cinemas 29 August.

Click here to see the trailer.

For a chance to win one of the double passes, email [email protected] with MIDAS MAN on the subject line by 5pm Tuesday 27 August.