A Simple Favor

07 Oct 2018

Score

A Simple Favor has a fairly unique and well-paced plot. I enjoyed my time in the theater and thinking about the movie after leaving so I can’t do anything but give A Simple Favor a positive recommendation. It’s not a fantastic movie, not a burgeoning classic, but it stands a step above the wash of boring garbage that is modern cinema.

Scale

Scale is very important when it comes to a movie’s audience investment. Some directors must think that greater scale, greater stakes always leads to greater audience investment. If your protagonist is struggling to save a kitten there’s no stakes the movie must be boring. Saving his family or his community? That’s a little better but your audience can’t be truly invested in your movie until the fate of the world is at stake.

This is of course total malarky. The Best Offer puts a boring art critic’s love life on the line. The worst that can happen in Rain Man is a public outburst. Lars and the Real Girl does feature a tragic death, but I don’t think the stakes could be anymore deflated.

These films each have next to nothing at stake yet you can’t help but feel wholly invested in their outcomes. It’s much the same with A Simple Favor. By the second half of the movie everybody’s hunting around, deviously plotting, and screaming their heads off over what amounts to little more than a million dollars, the sororicidal murder of an unrepentant junkie, and the potential breakup of an adulterous couple. Funnily enough the breakup moves into the forefront of the movie as much of the downtime is spent showing just how well the couple gets along. A Simple Favor slowly reveals its mystery in a way to keep the audience waiting for more and always guessing as to how it will all end.

Feminism and the Character of Sean

A Simple Favor features some very interesting feminist tones that I can’t place as either deliberate or accidental. The most striking scene to me is near the end when Stephanie and Sean confront Emily at her home. Sean starts off with a poor attempt at tricking his manipulator into revealing her deception on tape. He is quickly cut off as Stephanie enters the scene and shoots him for seemingly no reason. The seemingly fatal shooting is of course a ruse orchestrated by Stephanie and Sean designed to capture Emily confessing to her crimes. It is revealed to the audience that Stephanie and Sean have reconciled off screen and are now aligned in their goals. Whatever happens next is of little emotional consequence after acknowledging this.

Emily calls the bluff and the two actors reveal their ruse. Sean attempts to get a word in but he is silenced and talked over in turn by both Emily and Stephanie. He doesn’t get to argue with Emily, explain how he reconciled with Stephanie, or say anything of importance at all. At this point he is totally unnecessary to the scene. His unimportance is emphasized when Emily effectively removes him from the discussion by shooting him in the arm. Stephanie and paradoxically Sean are mostly un-phased by this occurrence and the scene moves to leave Sean bleeding out on the floor until the tension is resolved entirely without him in a completely stupid turn of events.

I cannot think of a more emasculated character than Sean. He is completely ineffective in the last scene and his actions there are just a continuation of his total unimportance throughout the film. The main characters are Emily and Stephanie. Sean is not even supporting, he is a side character that changes nothing and supports no one. Sean takes one proactive move in the whole film: making romantic advances towards Stephanie. But even this dominant action is stolen from Sean. Through flashback sequences and the story’s focus on Stephanie we are meant to look at Sean’s advances as a repeat of a previous event from Stephanie’s life rather than an original action performed by his character. Sean is a means to the end of character development for Stephanie. His actions have no meaning or context without Stephanie’s backstory.

What puzzles me is if Sean’s ineffective, weak, emasculated portrayal is done intentionally to contrast with the strong-willed and empowered female characters or just an unintentional quirk of the writing. If the former than casting Henry Golding in the role was a great decision; he plays a very similar part in an earlier film Crazy Rich Asians. If Sean’s weak character is totally unintentional and the casting decision is just another coincidence in the long line of coincidences the end product is the same. Had a more prominent and in-charge male actor¹ been cast as Sean the character certainly wouldn’t come off as so weak-willed.

Anna Kendrick Saves a Boring Role

Anna Kendrick is a great actor.² She’s typecast to hell and back³, but contrary to popular belief typecasting is not a bad thing. Actors are typically type-casted because they’re very good at one kind of character. Sylvester Stallone plays grizzled warriors because he looks, acts, and talks like a grizzled warrior. Michael Sera plays awkward but kind dudes because he’s awkward and kind in real life⁴. Anna Kendrick plays a … you know what this point is becoming harder to make because Stephanie is in actuality a far cry from the typical Kendrick role. In Pitch Perfect Kendrick plays a spunky Beca who dishes out shade and takes it just as well all while deftly navigating the drama fueled waters of college a cappella. Stephanie on the other hand is a suburban single mom who doesn’t know whether to be put off by or deferential to Emily’s off the cuff rudeness. Stephanie’s spunkiness finally shines through after her thorough corruption at the hands of Emily. By the end of the movie we get to see that Stephanie has adopted a healthy blend of her former drab suburban mom lifestyle and new extemporaneous rudeness.

Footnotes