She’s so fabulous, it’s enough to make you wonder whether she’s even real-and then wonder whether Anna is imagining it later when she swears she sees Jane’s husband stabbing her to death in their kitchen. “Oh, you’re a shrink? That’s a twist!” she laughs as they feel each other out between sips of brandy and wine. Julianne Moore plays her as a firecracker blonde: effervescent and engaging, funny and startlingly frank, she’s just the spark Anna needs.
He seems harmless enough, but soon afterward, his mother, Jane, shows up and provides even more insight into the family. “I can see your house from my room,” says the Russells’ boyishly sweet, teenage son, Ethan ( Fred Hechinger), the first time he comes to visit. You can tell Wright and Delbonnel reveled in the film’s noir visual touches.)
(One particularly striking shot finds the shadow of a lace curtain sprawled across the left side of her face in the lamplight. The Russell family has moved in across the street, and Anna has watched their every movement very carefully from the sanctity of her perch. Sopping up the red liquid with a stray piece of scrap paper only emphasizes how much it looks like blood. It’s the kind of fine-tuned technique we’ve come to expect throughout her eclectic career.īut there’s even more pressing danger on the horizon, as foreshadowed by the glass of wine she drops to the floor with a shatter. Adams reveals her character’s instability through panicked trembles and manic cackles, yet with a fundamental wisdom underneath. The rhythm of their sessions and the repetition of certain phrases, coupled with the solitary location, make these early moments of “The Woman in the Window” feel like a play on film in the best possible ways. He responds patiently, “Why not make today the day you go outside?” But she doesn’t, and Letts, as her therapist, is the one who comes to her. “Tell me to go outside,” she beseeches in one of several phone calls with her ex-husband ( Anthony Mackie), who’s also the father of her little girl and the film’s Greek chorus of sorts.
Then again, who among us hasn’t felt like time is a flat circle over the past year or so? (Wright employs a couple of cool, split-diopter shots with the television in the background and an extreme close-up of Anna’s face in the foreground for an unsettling, DePalmaesque touch.) But the mixture of substances and isolation makes her perspective unreliable from the start, which means the title cards indicating days of the week are useful only to the audience. These exchanges let us know that Adams’ Anna Fox has managed to maintain her sense of humor, despite her depression and agoraphobia.Ī psychologist who has suffered a breakdown, Anna has cocooned herself with food delivery, classic films, and a steady diet of prescription drugs and red wine. Finn’s 2018 best-selling novel, establishes a snappy tone with rat-a-tat dialogue off the top. And the always brilliant screenwriter and co-star Tracy Letts, in adapting A.J. Gifted cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (“ Inside Llewyn Davis,” “ A Very Long Engagement”) lights the rooms of her home in garish pinks and chilly blues, reflecting both her mania and her loneliness. Director Joe Wright (“ Atonement,” “Pride & Prejudice”) puts many of his showy camerawork instincts on display, making Adams’ character’s Manhattan brownstone feel both cavernous and claustrophobic.