A Simple Favor Is a Twisty Path To Standard Hollywood Default

For all the noir and goth frills, it’s not that complicated.

Paul Feig’s 2017 over-the-top comedy suspense thriller A Simple Favor has elements of noir and elements of the gothic; there are femme fatales, evil twin doubles, doppelgangers, incest secrets and homoerotic subtext galore. The prurient scandalousness is a preposterous and ominous delight—for most of the run time. But, unfortunately, the film is too true to its classic sources; like many a noir and gothic thriller past, the impetus to assure the audience that normalcy and decency wins out in the end undermines the fun in favor of staid moralism and just desserts.

As is the case in most of these things, the plot starts out simple. Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) is a widowed single mom with a YouTube craft vlog. She hides her loneliness beneath a gratingly cheerful exterior…until her son, Miles, asks for a playdate with Nicky. Nicky is the child of Emily Nelson (Blake Lively), the high powered, PR director of a high-end fashion company. Blake is profane, inappropriate, sexual and disillusioned; she and simpering perfect mommy Stephanie seem to have nothing in common. But over martinis and playdates they hit it off and become best-friends. Until, that is Emily disappears, and her body is found in a Michigan lake.

From there the film quickly accelerates into a haze of diabolical schemes and improbable twists. (Spoilers follow if you care about such things.) Emily quickly falls in love and into bed with Emily’s yummy ex-husband Sean Townsend (Henry Golding). But then it turns out that Emily may not be dead after all; she had, we learn, a twin sister. The fake death appears to be an insurance scam—though who exactly was in on the scam, and what crimes were committed, all remains for Stephanie to find out.

The most interesting part of the film is the way that the creators aren’t willing to let Stephanie just be the default helpless nice girl a la the nameless, hapless, smitten narrator in Rebecca. Stephanie has her own secrets; she slept with her half-brother, who may be her child’s father—her husband figured it out, which may have led to the car crash in which both men died. Stephanie also appears to be bisexual; she originates at least one steamy kiss with Emily.

Queer people in noir and in gothic fiction are generally the untrustworthy manipulators and bad guys; Stephanie’s taboo sexual past and taboo sexual desires link her to femme fatales and gothic villains. The film, though, isn’t exactly willing to follow through on those hints; Stephanie pulls away frm that kiss with Emily, and if she’s had other relationships with women, we never learn about them.

In contrast, Emily’s very queer-signaling suits sheath a past which includes queer relationships and a lot of murderous plotting. Stephanie’s passive aggressive mom-volunteer energy may ultimately be more deceptive and sneaky than Emily’s femme fatale act, but that just means good triumphs over evil. Despite all the twists and tergiversations, the movie never seriously considers making the perfect homemaker mom the villain, or handing the victory to the bad mommy with the loose sexual morals and the job that keeps her out of the house. Nor do Stephanie and Emily get to team up against Sean, even if he is a philandering doofus.

The actors aren’t to blame here. Kendrick relishes finding the nuggets of passion and viciousness hidden away in the corners of Stephanie’s embarrassed smile, and Lively enjoys unearthing the moments of sincere mother love and friendship from Emily’s blizzard of lies. But Feig and his creative team weren’t willing to follow their leads to a weirder, more disturbing, and more satisfying film. Instead, loose ends are tied up, bad guys go to jail, and suburban moms win out over darkness, external and internal. That’s what you do in Hollywood when you want to ensure a sequel, perhaps.  For a moment there, though it looked like the film would offer something a little less simple.