Streaming Sleepers: In TROPHY WIFE, Marital Bliss Is Obviously Anything But
Trophy Wife is now available on Amazon Prime in the U.S. for rental or purchase, from Indie Rights Movies.
Trigger Warring: This review discusses domestic violence.
Michael Hoad is an actor whose works I’ve typically covered from his trajectory in action and choreography, per this site’s purview. That’s not to overlook his pursuits as an actor, which is something not too far off for anyone in his particular field, and so it makes sense for me to spotlight his latest collaborative work now available on Amazon Prime in the U.S. for rental or purchase.
For this, we turn to Eric Garson’s feature debut, Trophy Wife, presumptively a tale of a loving marriage that’s revealed to be more toxic than thought. This is at least what the title and inoccuous poster would have you believe, unless you’ve seen the trailer which doles out at least one nugget of peculiar sci-fi intrigue. You wouldn’t be wrong either way if you went into the film as mostly blind as I did.
It’s interesting that Garson let’s the first of many of the film’s proverbial cats out of the bag a bit early on in terms of character development; That toxicity I mentioned earlier starts taking shape well near the start of the film as it makes it nakedly clear the nature of the unsubtly troublesome marriage between Frank (Hoad), and Ava (Paola Ceseracciu).
Ava wakes up one day from an accident that presumably caused her to have a bump on her head, as well as a mild form of amnesia. Advised by Frank to stay home for the next few weeks, Ava is forced to cope with an increasingly suffocating life indoors as she soon starts wondering about the nature of her marriage, Frank’s job and friends, and reasons why she can’t even open the basement door, let alone approach the stairs to go out.
All these, coupled with indistinct and pulp memory flashes along with apparitions and other hallucinatory images, it’s only a matter of time before Ava’s eyes are opened to reality, and must find a way to escape her seemingly inescapable tradwife life. What remains to be seen is the choice she’ll soon have to make before she can fight for her freedom.
That choice entails a truth that goes to the heart of one aspect I threw into this review early on. To that end, Garson does a fairly well job at keeping the suspense going and the twists at bay. The irksome part of this is that he does so by prolonging the upheaval that Ava is faced with for the weeklong period in which this story is set. From the start of the film, Ava is exposed to Frank’s deceptive person, which bodes like a ticking timebomb that can easily go from loving and caring spouse to the terse, secretive troglodyte who hits her and has her way with her regardless of her autonomy.
What’s more is that Ava has to hold onto her suspicions regardless of the beleaguring clues she sees and observes with her own eyes, even as mutuals leave nuggets of revelatory facts of their own. It’s a near roller-coaster of flagrantly nightmaring exploits of what no one should endure no matter how appealing the veneer, or security regardless of the false-sense it leaves.
I suppose in this instance, what’s more surprising than the third act twist jocularly mingling something out of Shelly, Shakespeare, and Craven (minus the gothic allure, and gore), is enduring the journey Ava wills to put herself through, being gaslit and excoriated at almost every turn. And, I guess that’s where a little sympathy goes along way as, reasonably, it’s never as simple to leave an abusive situation as just saying it. To that affect, Ava’s quarantined journey of survival and introspection is something I believe anyone can take heed of, which does lend its share of plusses as the rest of the story unfolds.
Trophy Wife has dark romance, psychological intrigue and mystery, murder, and a few tasty doses of violence and the red stuff to bookend Garson’s venture into a fantastical millieu that almost echoes Yoon Eun-kyoung’s dystopian flair in The Tenants. It’s not for everyone and so it does warrant a heads-up, and while Garson’s freshman outing here isn’t without its imperfections, he does show a breadth and capability to carry a story forward, one grounded in mature subject matter, and gripping enough to keep select interests piqued.
Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!
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