Olivia Wilde’s first movie as a director, coming-of-age caper Booksmart, was a complete delight, so hopes could be excessive for her return. Enter Don’t Fear Darling, however not for the explanations anticipated. Because it seems, it’s one thing of a left flip: once more made in collaboration with Booksmart author Katie Silberman, however a interval piece and set in a really totally different world from the real-life humor of her debut.
This time, we’re in Nineteen Fifties California for a story that pulls on the existential sci-fi of Inception, The Matrix and The Truman Present (Wilde’s personal references) and some shades of The Stepford Wives (ours, based mostly on the trailer). Our hero is Alice, spouse to Jack, who finds a job within the all-consuming however fairly mysterious Victory Venture. As Alice begins her new life with the guy Victory workers and wives of their tight, apparently utopian, neighborhood, she begins to sense one thing is just not fairly proper: the whole lot from airplanes to eggs don’t appear fairly actual, and nobody will say precisely what this undertaking is all about.
Past Wilde’s personal monitor report there are the celebs she’s chosen for the movie. Alice and Jack are performed by Florence Pugh, contemporary from Black Widow and Midsommar, and One Course singer Harry Kinds, in a job that was initially given to Shia LaBoeuf however which appears sure to consolidate the singer’s performing profession and has additionally led to him courting Wilde. In the meantime, as Frank, chief of the Victory Venture, there’s Chris Pine, the Star Trek lead turning his seems to be and charisma to the darkish aspect.
The trailer additionally reveals the opposite movie’s key participant: the situation of Palm Springs. For her utopia, Wilde filmed on this distinctive desert oasis, famed for its midcentury-modern structure, with its clear strains, industrial supplies and bursts of shade sitting surreally in a panorama of mountains and palm bushes.
The town has appeared on movie earlier than: Mission: Unimaginable III and Ocean’s 11 made it a characteristic and 50 years in the past Sean Connery obtained a beating from two gymnastic feminine bodyguards within the concrete surrounds of the well-known Arthur Elrod Home in Diamonds Are Perpetually. Don’t Fear Darling, although, focuses on the town’s peculiar aesthetic as by no means earlier than, utilizing each the wonder and weirdness of its futurist imaginative and prescient. Right here’s a showcase of the movie’s tour of this wonderful metropolis.
