The opening of writer-director J. Blakeson’s debut film “The Disappearance of Alice Creed” is smart and effective. To a point. We watch as a pair of unnamed men (played by Martin Compston and Eddie Marsan) do some villainous deeds: they outfit a small, grungy room with soundproof foam, they wipe down a beige industrial van (to quote “Jennifer’s Body,” it looks like “an ’89 Rapist”). We don’t know who exactly these two dudes are, but we know they’re up to no good. And as wordless, wonderfully edited montages go, this is a really great way to get the information across without ever being too blatant.
Soon enough, they kidnap the titular Alice Creed (Gemma Arterton), who we can only presume is a rich girl well off enough to warrant a kidnapping. They grab her, throw her in the van, and then throw her into that crummy, now fully insulated room. They strip her down and take a picture of her with that day’s newspaper. And here’s where things reach an uncomfortable level of ickiness that the movie never really recovers from.
They remove all of her clothes, but in doing so, act out a kind of ‘Austin Powers’-esque pantomime where her lower half is never exposed (where do you think they throw down the newspaper? Bingo! Over her lady bits!). Now, this could be just an example of the British filmmakers’ English squeamishness, this is a country, after all, that has made an event out of the Page 6 girls who are always topless. But it’s a punch that when pulled, can never be undone. Instead of being a fully formed person, one with, you know, a vagina, she is a pin-up model in some elaborate bit of role playing. Her humanity is taken away from us, leaving instead a very pretty girl without her shirt on.
From then on out, “The Disappearance of Alice Creed” tries to reinstate again and again just how clever it is. But it turns out, it’s not that clever. It is, however, very small, which adds to the claustrophobia but also gives you very little in terms of breathing room within the narrative. The three characters (Alice Creed and her two kidnappers) are pretty much all there is. And instead of big story beats, there are character revelations, which are also all you get in the way of twists and turns. These character moments, however, are punctuated by extremely grim exchanges between the kidnappers and the kidnapped; in one humiliating moment they force her to pee into a chamberpot. Arterton is, at the very least, totally fearless.
It’s hard to talk about the rest of the movie without giving away some of these “twists,” which would be okay if the movie weren’t totally dependent on them for any and all dramatic tension. It seems like J. Blakeson decided that this would be a cool set-up, came up with some occasionally nifty twists, and then hung a limp and tired torture-porn set-up on top of it. We’re hesitant to use the “torture porn” phrase when describing something because it seems like the kind of knee-jerk qualifier that some dusty old prude came up with, but when so much of the movie is spent with our lead actress topless, well, if the shoe fits…
And it should be said that all the actors equip themselves nicely with flimsy pulp material that is quite obviously below them. Arterton is strong in the lead role as a rich girl who is attracted to the wrong element but still handles herself nicely in a situation of unparalleled emotional and physical stress, even if the script doesn’t allow for her to become a fully fleshed out personality. Those that only know her from her bland performances in Hollywood fare like “Clash of the Titans” and “Quantum of Solace” will be surprised at the kind of nuance she injects into such a two-dimensional character. Marsan is, as always, peerless as a jilted ex-con with more than a few secrets. You root for the movie to be better just because he’s in it. And Compston, a British actor who has minor roles in UK productions like “Doomsday” and “The Damned United,” holds his own with both Marsan and Arterton, in wildly different scenes.
But at the end of the day, all the acting heavyweights and narrative loop-de-loops can’t save the movie from being a trashy little genre picture that’s more yellowed paperback than worthwhile big screen entertainment. It’s not the kind of trashy little genre picture that you love and covet and can see yourself revisiting down the line because once the big reveals are made, the rest of the movie falls away. Everything seems weightless. The villains are less true villains than villains in some bad B-movie, which “The Disappearance of Alice Creed” very much is. Nothing is very memorable and everything unfolds in a kind of synced monotony. Even the twists have a kind of deliberate familiarity after a while. We’ve been here before, we’ve done that. And with a lead character that the filmmakers strip of humanity in the opening sequence, ‘Alice Creed’ will disappear from your memory minutes after leaving the theater. [C-]
For a different take on the film read our Fantasia review here.