Films > DVD Reviews

Gone Girl

29/01/15

Girls, eh? They’re everywhere these days. Not just in parks and buildings and such, but they pop up in films quite a lot, too. They’ve had dragon tattoos, been interrupted, and done gossip, all for our entertainment, and, though some will dismiss this as political-correctness-gone-mad, I honestly sometimes wonder where cinema would be without them. Well, this month I endeavoured to find out just that, and settled down on my man-sized sofa with some manly flavoured ice-cream and a pint of chardonnay to watch David Fincher’s latest offering, ‘Gone Girl’.

The bad news is that I still don’t know where cinema would be without girls, as the title of this film is a wretched lie and there are loads of them in it.  “Yeah, Jay, but it’s not called ‘Gone Girls’ plural, is it. Maybe there’s one fewer girl in it than the mean average number of girls in films, in which case the title is accurate,” I hear you cry. And you’re right, of course.

The good news is that, despite being a little girl-heavy for my research, ‘Gone Girl’ is a damn fine film. Based on the hugely popular novel by Gillian Flynn, it’s a tense and twisty tale of boy-meets-girl, boy-and-girl-fall-in-love, girl-disappears, boy-is-heavily-implicated-in-disappearance-of-girl-but-fiercely-protests-his-innocence, boy-becomes-embroiled-in-media-circus, in which we’re never certain where our sympathies should lie, only that TV people are top arseholes.

It’s difficult to find anything wrong with it, really, as one would expect with a film by one of today’s most accomplished directors. Too many girls, maybe? Perhaps, but if this experience has taught me anything, it’s that girls are here to stay. We may as well get used to it.