Film Pick of the Week: Don't Worry Darling - review by Yvette Huddleston

It is the 1950s (except, is it?) and the thriving new community of Victory in the middle of the Californian desert is the kind of place that attracts ambitious young couples and their families. The men go out to work every morning in their sleek convertible cars, waved off by their immaculately coiffed and attired wives, and are all employed at a ‘facility’ run by charismatic company boss Frank (Chris Pine).

It is not clear exactly what the men are doing at work and their wives are consistently told that whatever it is, it is top secret and they are not allowed to talk about it. What is important is that they are all working to ‘make the world a better place’. This is accepted by the wives who are seemingly content to spend their days listening to Victory propaganda on the radio while cleaning the house and preparing dinner for when their husbands return home.

Apart from domestic duties, the wives get together at Victory’s swish country club drinking cocktails and planning the next dinner party. The golden couple at the centre of the narrative are Jack (Harry Styles) and his wife Alice (Pugh) who appear to be blissfully happy. Jack is doing well at work and Alice is apparently delighted to busy herself with housework and gossiping with her best friend and neighbour Bunny (Wilde). However, another friend, Margaret (KiKi Layne) has been asking awkward questions and is now being sidelined, while Alice herself is having strange, nightmarish episodes involving hallucinatory thoughts featuring Busby Berkley-style dance routines… When Alice takes a trolley car ride out into the desert one day, she inadvertently sees something she shouldn’t have seen.

The film then takes an interesting swerve in its storyline – no spoilers, so to say any more would be to reveal too much – which takes it into another realm altogether. While that plot twist does strain credulity a little, it is a bold flourish and Pugh remains entirely convincing throughout. There is, it has to be said, not a great deal of substance here, but there is plenty of style. This is a film that is beautifully designed, costumed and shot, and there are some wonderful cinematic moments from cinematographer Matthew Libatique.