"The Girl," a disturbing film that suggests famed director Alfred Hitchcock behaved like a psychotic lout toward leading lady Tippi Hedren during their two movies together, could have used the Hitchcock touch.
The story, based on Hedren’s account of their schizophrenic relationship, paints a dark picture of “Hitch,” who seems to have been old-school in the sense that everyone was expected to defer to his every neurotic whim.
It feels choppy in spots, a point magnified because it’s about a director whose storytelling was famously seamless right up through his two movies with Hedren, “The Birds” and “Marnie.”
Still, superb performances by Toby Jones as Hitchcock and Sienna Miller as Hedren keep the story alive and moving.
Jones has the harder job, playing a creepy man who directed creepy movies. Hitchcock is given only one dimension here: an arrogant egomaniac who was unpleasant to everyone around him.
That includes his wife, Alma (Imelda Staunton), his professional collaborator and, as portrayed here, his personal enabler.
Miller’s Hedren sometimes looks whipsawed as Hitchcock moves from subtly derogatory asides to flat-out sexual demands. If she bends, though, she never breaks, even when we know in hindsight she could endanger her career by defying a man of Hitchcock’s power.
In the end, it’s less a story of loss or triumph than of sadness, asking a question ominous enough to be worthy of a Hitchcock film: At what point does the price for art become too high?
Source : nydailynews[dot]com
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