2019 | Canada | Directed Zach Gayne
Logline: An older woman attempts to befriend a younger woman, only to reveal a troubled mind and an insidious agenda.
There’s nothing like a well-executed cat fight, and in Zach Gayne’s wicked two-hander he provides his actors with one of the best little battlegrounds in quite some time. This is a blackly comic pearler. The emphasis is on the contrasting personalities, a delicate, finely-tuned character study at play, and this is one of those delicious ones that descends into ugly territory indeed, yet still remains a comedy at dark heart. Oh, there’ll be tears before bedtime; tears of laughter, tears of sorrow, and tears of pain. Tear being the operative word.
We begin our battle of the wills in the gym and the yoga class. Michelle (Alex Essoe) looks 30ish. She is being watched by Linda (Precious Chong), a woman going on 50. Alex has missed her period, but forgot tampons. Thankfully Linda happens to be carrying a spare, even though she’s no longer on the rag. Hmmm. Later at a cafe where Michelle is on her laptop working on an interior decorating job in waltzes Linda, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and immediately ingratiates herself, using coffee as her spanner in the works.
Before you can say “boiled rabbit”, Linda has coerced Michelle back to her semi-detached dump to peruse a possible decorating job, “What’s your rate? I’ll pay you double! Triple! Quadruple! Hahah, I’m joking!” Michelle tries to dodge a potent tequila cocktail being thrust in her face, and the liquid therapy is smashed on the kitchen floor. Michelle is mortified, Linda is slightly phased, but already calculating her next move.
Y’see, Linda just wants to advise Michelle on her future with husband Robert, and the prospect of motherhood. She suspects there is trouble in paradise. She’s aggressively friendly. Michelle just wants to get the hell out Linda’s house. And so begins an hilarious and chaotic game of cat and mouse between the two woman, with the husband as the stinky cheese in the middle.
A nod to the shenanigans of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and a nod to the psycho-drama and thrills of oh-so-many movies, such as Single White Female and Fatal Attraction. Homewrecker is also a disquieting dig at fidelity and loneliness. It sports a cracker of a script, which feels partially improvised. The screenplay is credited to Gayne, Essoe and Chong, and no doubt they must have had a whale of a time throwing lines of barbed dialogue at each other, upping the dramatic ante, throwing caution to the wind.
It’s a micro-budget feature with a running time that barely clocks in at the required 75-minutes. But it makes for a highly vindictive, very funny hour and a bit. Indeed, the pace is quick, but with some contemplative downtime whilst the two play a board game called “Party Hunks” (an 80s throwback - like all of Linda’s world - designed for the movie), and then back into the combat, with a particularly horrendous denouement you won’t see coming.
Alex Essoe and Precious Chong deliver terrific performances, seriously good. Chong has the craze-eye down pat, and Essoe provides the perfect counterpoint; centred, but slightly anxious wife becoming increasingly wary. As Chong becomes more and more agitated, Essoe is pushed toward hysteria. The escalation is a mischievous joy to watch.
Essoe has become one of my favourite indie actors, and Homewrecker sneaks its way into my year’s favourite movies.