Making a film (or telling any story) without a protagonist is a tall order. Characters that begin their journey as unlikable typically wind up on some kind of redemptive growth arc. That’s not the case with J Blakeson’s latest. I Care A Lot is a wilder ride than you’d expect and stops briefly to criticize the structure of elderly care in America.
It reminds me, in part, of white-collar true-crime films like The Wolf of Wall Street or The Big Short. It’s not hard to see Blakeson drew inspiration from those films, but taking that approach with something that isn’t a true story took a little steam off the punch. Combine that with an unsympathetic lead and you’re asking quite a lot from the viewer.
Marla Grayson is pretty despicable from the moment she’s introduced. There isn’t much in the way of redeeming qualities to be found over the course of her story, but she is ride or die. She’s built a cozy little career niche by colluding with doctors, caretakers, and other professionals to swindle the vulnerable elderly out of their life’s earnings under the guise of “guardianship”. Her ruthless greed and ambition uniquely position her to manipulate the law, incompetent judges, and the social security system standing in her way. Not only does she take all their money, but she also imprisons them in assisted care facilities that she treats like her own little Guantanamo, and denies them access to their family and other advocates. She’s truly an awful person and while I’m not cheering that in the slightest, you can’t deny she’s doing it in style.
That said, Rosamund Pike is freaking fantastic in this role. She has put together a really solid portfolio over the past few years and is really coming into her own. Blakeson clearly designed the character to be loathsome and that’s drilled into the dialogue, but Pike breathed life into it with each annoying puff of her vape. I can’t think of too many actors who could pull this role off with such effectiveness. There’s a kind of knee-jerk reaction to characters we don’t like, but Pike’s performance set the bar pretty high for the rest of 2021. I hope she doesn’t get lost in the shuffle as the year goes on because she was brilliant, even though I couldn’t stand her.
Peter Dinklage is great and even though his character Roman would be the villain 99 times out of 100, he’s the lesser of two evils in this equation. I wouldn’t describe him as the good guy either, but Blakeson at least gave him an inkling of moral foundation. He and Pike are wonderful together in their somewhat limited interaction, but it worked. When they share scenes, all the strengths of the dark comedy rise to the surface. Usually, I’d want these two to have more screen time together but it works well in this instance.
The venerable Dianne Wiest plays the elderly woman in Grayson’s crosshairs and she’s so much fun to watch. It’s through her portrayal that you really see the damage that Grayson is doing to these people. She has that innocent charm that we’ve seen from her so many times before but it’s balanced with sly cunning. Wiest is insanely watchable every time she’s on-screen.
Eiza González plays Grayson’s lover Fran, another one of the cogs in the exploitation machine. She’s not even a little bit likable either and the chemistry isn’t particularly strong but it works well enough. Her character does bring some common sense to the equation but it’s quickly overridden. González was good but there wasn’t much to go around for her with Grayson’s character casting such a large shadow.
It was an interesting choice for Blakeson to make this a lesbian relationship. Their relationship was a fragment of the bigger picture and not focused on the experiences of same-sex couples specifically, so the presentation felt a bit superficial in that way. Maybe that was the point. Marla Grayson is a confident, successful, powerful woman, and she’s gay! It’s not about her sexual orientation really at all, that’s just a piece of the character. I’m not saying Blakeson was wrong, he can write whatever he wants, and inclusion and representation are both good things. Maybe I’m reading into it too much, but I was observing a discussion between screenwriters asking why white males write female and minority leads in their scripts, so it just stood out to me after watching this. If nothing else, this film emphatically says that lesbian characters don’t have to adhere to particular roles and are free to be unlikable just as much as anybody else.
There’s a lot of table setting for a much broader and wilder story than you get introduced to initially, but that’s a big part of where the enjoyment comes from. Part mystery, part dark comedy, you can’t help but pull at that thread. And speaking of threads, the costume and wardrobe department clearly had a lot of fun designing Grayson’s look. The whole visual aesthetic is fantastic and Doug Emmett’s cinematography really stretches this whole concept out to the fullest extent of its potential.
Recommendation: If you enjoy mysteries, there’s enough there to pull you in and the performances are great.