REVIEW : "The Girl" (2012) - TV Movie by Julian Jarrold

Normally, a "TV movie" would not be something I would spend time on, as the TV audience is a different kind of "artistic" target than the feature film one. But in the case of "The Girl", which is a drama about the controversial "relationship" between Alfred Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren, I will make an exception, as I am both a very keen Hitchcock fan but am also aware that he was not exactly the most psychologically together person ever.

He had power over people who wanted to further their own career and wanted to use his "movies" as a stepping stone to get there. While they were in his "claws", certainly they would have to submit to him to some extend to get to their goals. He knew that and they knew that ... it is the name of the game.

After the incredible succes of the shock-movie Psycho, which Hitchcock both financed, directed and produced, several things happened to him I would think. He would have gotten the sense that he was on the right path with "modern", quality shockers and slasher-like movies with a high level of sexualised content. He was now enormously wealthy and could "buy" a leading lady for his next projects as he saw fit, it was just a question of when he found someone who was hungry enough for the "glamour". It is a well known fact that he had had trouble keeping his "blondes" from film to film and probably, unrightfully, felt they abandoned him.

His longtime coming convergence towards explicit sexuality in movies would have had fertile grounds to come to fruition in an "environment" like this. Also his physical relationship with his wife Alma, by his own account, was non existent. My theory is, that after Psycho, he decided to go all the way, down this path of manipulating the world into his fantasies, come what may.

We are dealing with the period of filming The Birds 1963 and Marnie 1964. It covers a period of about 3 years while Hedren had signed a contract for seven years filming with Hitchcock. The plot structure and the specific incidents shown in the movie are probably pretty much correct from a pure factual standpoint. I have no reason to doubt it and will not go deeper into that aspect of it. Hedren has written extensively about this and the book is what the movie is based on more or less as far as I know, so it is to some extend a one sided description that at least has the purpose of serving Hedren´s cause.

But at the same time, there is no reason to doubt that Hitchcock was at times a sadistic and disgusting personality to have power over you. He had a recurring tendency to make practical jokes with those who he worked with, particularly those he had power over and it goes way back to even the earliest silent days. It is a sign of Hitchcock himself dealing with experiences of belittlement and humiliation in his childhood (probably) by those who had power over him, he inflicts on other people later as he had "gained" power over them. It is pretty obvious to me.

The problem with this movie is that it is almost exclusively tilted towards Hedren as an innocent girl who is just being taken advantage of by Hitchcock. We do not get to see the details of the contract they have signed, why she just jumped into a 7 year contract with Hitchcock, how they negotiated it. Why she is a single mother. Why she seems to have no power to say no to anything he demands by referring to the contract.

It is portrayed as if she is just "plucked" from the streets and treated like a slave harem girl and can do nothing about it. That I don't buy. I am pretty sure that nowhere in that contract she made with him, it says she has to let him kiss and grope her and demand her being her "sex-slave" of sorts. Why don't she go that route. If he breaks the contract I see no reason why she should continue honouring it? These aspects are not treated at all - only the "helpless victim" who is taken advantage of and can do nothing about it and apparently had no clue that the business she is in probably is ripe with it. Come on !!

Things happening the way they are shown or not, we never get any back story to these two central characters. Whenever that is the case, it is as good as certain that there is some kind of underlying agenda. I am just saying. I am not into protecting either of them or their legacy. But when we don't get a back story, particularly of a movie length production, it is because the fact of that back story does not fit the intended narrative. And the narrative is Hitchcock (men) evil and Hedren (women) good.

And that pretty much destroys the interest in a semi-documentary style drama if I am bombarded with one-sided, implicit explanations to why things are happening the way they are. I am fine with Hitchcock being (at this time) a dirty old pig who wants to control a girl to get sexual access to her, but I want an explanation and a backstory so that I don't feel manipulated into some political correct (hashtag)Metoo kind of propaganda.

Toby Jones does a decent job trying to look and sound like Hitchcock, even if his stature is rather small to fit the bill. His voice work though is pretty much spot on and actually sounds exactly like him several times. I am always in a dilemma with these "lookalike" roles. When the actor is supposed to look like the person they are portraying, there will inevitably be focused on how well that particular actor looks and sounds like him. And that may take some focus away from just enjoying the story. On the other hand if the actor does not look at all like the him, it may not feel natural or believable. It is difficult.

I think Toby strikes a decent balance here and I am going with it. Sienna Miller is another story. I feel she acts like a millennial person who is time transported back to 1960´s. She is not really believable as Tippi. I am not exactly sure what it is but she does not feel like a woman from 1963 but more like a nice modern girl who has some 1960´s style clothes on. The only thing I can think of is that she is deliberately made modern so that female viewers better identify with her than with a 1960´s type of woman. It is not the first time I have seen this "trend", and I am pretty confident it won't be the last.

We do get to see specific famous shots from both of these particular movies and the emphasis is on making every one of those scenes into a sadistic endeavour of Hitchcock for humiliating Hedren after she has turned down his "sexual innuendos". I am sure it is pretty much factually correct, particularly that one with the several days of shooting her getting birds thrown at her in the "attic scene". But it is like everything shown is another nail in the coffin of Hitchcock, in a very one-sided way. It just gets boring in my opinion to get "facts" recreated on screen and then watching her "suffering" face for the twentieth time.

I certainly had hoped for more, even from a TV movie. It is hard for me to recommend this to anyone actually. The Hitchcock fan already knows the details of this story and nothing interesting is added neither to the actual incidents or to the backstory of any of them. There is not really a decent story here when it all comes down but rather a semi-propaganda piece about how "disgusting" men are. I fear that is what it is truly made for. While I hope not.

5/10