‘Woman Of The Hour’: Toronto Review

Dir. Anna Kendrick. US/Canada. 2023. 93mins 

Woman Of The Hour knows the deep terror felt by its lead character, Sheryl (Anna Kendricks), and the deferential manners she must deploy around misogynistic men. She plays an aspiring actress so anxious for a break, she goes on The Dating Game show in 1978 only to meet a serial killer in this true crime drama which also marks Kendrick’s directorial debut. As a director, Kendrick doesn’t reach for easy grotesque levers; Woman Of the Hour avoids glorifying its villain, balancing profound empathy with visual splendor in a narrative that follows the murderer, his victims and the actress in criss-cross, vignette-based storytelling. It’s a balance between prey and killer which adds a humanising touch to a grim picture.

A balance between prey and killer which adds a humanising touch to a grim picture

Kendrick’s measured approach pushes against genre expectations, which might disappoint viewers accustomed to streamable docuseries. Yet that makes her film an assured subversion which elicits both engrossing chills and surprising humour. An actor known for playing ebullient good girls in Up In The Air and the Pitch Perfect series, Kendrick is attempting to place her star persona in the kind of terrifying tale producers are probably wary of casting her in. By placing herself, the proverbial American sweetheart, in such a creepy and unsettling film, the filmmaker fashions unreal tension. Woman Of The Hour can deploy Kendrick as both an object of microaggressions and a space for cathartic, humorous release. 

The film opens on a literal frame within a frame. It’s 1977 in Wyoming, and before we ever see Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto), the vicious photographer who is the stuff of nightmares, we watch the world through his eyes. In his camera’s monitor, a blonde woman stands at the precipice of a desert cliff. She explains to him that she began her roadtrip in Texas with plans of travelling with her boyfriend, who fled when he learned of her pregnancy. Zovatto, delivering a breakout performance here, is unforgettably disturbing. He plays Alcala as charming, initially listening to this woman’s story with sympathy, care and attentiveness. But his face soon shifts, assuming a hollow yet distended expression. Alcala brutally pushes her to the ground and strangles her before resuscitating her with CPR and then raping her. 

Kendrick’s restrained lens captures many other encounters like this: Alcala picks up a teenage runaway (a real discovery in Autumn Best) in San Gabriel. He targets a young male office assistant at The Los Angeles Times. In New York City he helps a stewardess move into her new apartment, attempting to regale her with stories of taking classes with Roman Polanski at NYU. These horrific scenes are not sites to relish trauma: often the camera fractures the body, focusing solely on the woman’s writhing feet or clenched hands. 

Sheryl’s presence assumes the other half of the film. While the danger she faces isn’t as immediate, it’s still bleak. When she performs at an audition, the two casting agents dismiss her for being unsympathetic. Her next door neighbour, a disturbing fellow actor played by Pete Holmes, leers at her, playing nice guy in exchange for affection. Through men like him, Woman Of The Hour depicts the compromises and moments of silence women must endure in the presence of the men who hide behind false allyship. 

Shot by cinematographer Zach Kuperstein, bad acts are captured through elegant camera movement in barren desert landscapes, dark city parking lots, and the honey-soaked broad daylight of Los Angeles. 

Sheryl’s appearance on The Dating Game is the culminating set-piece for this thriller. Production designer Brent Thomas’ recreation of the ABC show’s set adds a blast of the 1970s to a period piece that otherwise tries to quietly remind you of the era. Told by the host Jim Lange (Tony Hale) to just smile and laugh at every answer, Sheryl eventually turns the tables. Kendrick moves Sheryl from timid to brazen by expending her star energy; the actress uses her signature moves – her light chuckle, her bewitching smile, her stealth wit – to garner the film’s biggest laughs. Alcala is the lone guest on The Dating Show who evades her probing questioning.

Sometimes the seams can show in this intercut narrative, but Kendrick’s direction shows startling confidence, not just through her taut performance, but in how nimbly Woman Of The Hour shifts tones and how efficiently it marries topics. Of course, the film is showing how the worst men are often hiding in plain sight while also illustrating that there’s no foolproof way to reveal them either. One woman (Nicolette Robinson) in the game show audience knows Alcala’s history; when she approaches the authorities to report him it’s telling how they disbelieve her not just because she’s a woman, but because she’s a Black woman.

In a picture featuring several instances of women trying to warn other women, one of the most powerful sequences is another instance where a woman is ignored. It happens towards the end, at a crossroads, when a battered teenage girl sits in the passenger seat of Alcala’s car. She stares distressingly at a male driver in a pickup; he ignores her and drives away. Woman Of The Hour eventually leaves too, but its unnerving score and empathetic lens, its vision of women in peril of lesser men, is a haunting reality and a tremendous directorial debut.