When the 'weaker' sex is strong enough to play the 'weak' card... and win the game...

Rating: 9/10 (18 May 2017)

Voice-over narration that sounds like post-coital whispers, opening credits the size of an ophthalmology screen, non-linear fuzzy editing "Gone Girl" isn't just a slow starter, it has an irritating tendency to give you the wrong idea. I can say in all frankness that after twenty minutes, I was contemplating the idea of getting to bed and finishing the film at the morning and the 'performance' of Ben Affleck didn't help. But the story grabbed me enough so I could make it as far as the middle section, and then, all the negative vibes were gone.
And not only did I love the film but retrospectively, what I saw as flaws actually made sense and even enhanced the appreciation, and that includes Ben Affleck's performance. We already suspected something was going wrong, quoting Lisa Simpson paraphrasing Churchill, what we had was "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma", if you consider as the "riddle" the little game played by Amy, Rosamund Pike in a gusto performance, consisting on leaving many clues to the Police, and a few incriminating ones in the process to accuse her husband Nick, the mystery about her absence and the enigmatic personality of both Amy and Nick, a couple that had everything to be happy, except the propensity for it. Near the end, Nick's lawyer, played by a scene-stealing Tyler Perry, tells his client that they're the most twisted couple he ever met, that's an understatement.
But this feeling is also the emotional reward after a build-up that needed to be long, to let the viewers make up their own mind, to be suspicious toward Nick who doesn't seem that upset when she shares his feelings with his twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon), to feel that he's hiding something until you understand why his acting was so subdued. This is a man who obviously doesn't play in the league than his wife, she's an intellectual New-Yorker, an uppity Annie-Hall-like broad without the sweetness, he's your average handsome Joe who wanted to get a girl better than him, that he succeeded was a splendid achievement, but what she saw as a beginning, he saw an ending. She followed him to Missouri and realized that marriage was asking too much in terms of sacrifice and compromises to even indulge to it.
But instead of filing a divorce and getting the hell out, what she did was far worse, but in terms of creative storytelling, far more intelligent. Indeed, there have been stories of vanishing persons in the past but not as twisted and smartly pervert as David Fincher's "Gone Girl". It is twisted almost in the literal sense of the word as there's no plot event to be taken for granted, just when you think this is taking some specific direction, the writers find the right way to derail the plot and increasing your interest. And it is smartly pervert because it highlights some deep and usually repressed aspects of human psyche, to start with the most 'evident' one, giving the film's theme: "haven't we all dreamed to vanish, at least once?". I dare any married people to say they never did.
People get many notions of suicides mixed up because there's no specific word for that, but there should, speaking for my own personal experience (and yes, I was particularly responsive to the film) and from what many friends shared with them, we, humans, do sometimes wish to simply vanish from existence, become someone else and never coming back. It's a way to escape from the burden of the past, the responsibilities, without any harmful self-infliction, a sort of victim-less suicide. "Gone Girl" would have been clever enough to tackle that subject but it goes beyond, this is no victim-less suicide, but a victim-less murder, a woman simulating her disappearance to accuse her husband and earn him a sentence (since this is happening in Missouri). Now, can it get more twisted?
Apparently yes, and I like that, I like that a film is hardcore enough to feature one of the most Machiavellian villains of recent history, in the Amazingly manipulative Amy, but the plot doesn't stop at that. Over the course of her diabolical project, she meets a few obstacles but she always have a trick under her sexy sleeve. And Nick is smartly played by Ben Affleck as the not-so-smart cool easy going guy, who married the wrong girl. It's all about a "He" and a "She" with a "She" too sophisticated, too New York for his Midwestern taste, but he wanted his trophy wife and he had to pay for his treacherous seduction. The thing is that this "He" and "She" don't quite match the general perception of the public and that's how a genius she is. She's strong enough to play the weak card.
She knows it's not just about leaving, it's about leaving marks that clearly accuses the husband, traces of blood, hints of pregnancy, a diary, everything is so neatly elaborate that you wish people could be as organized for benevolent reasons. I don't know if it's a personal fetish from Fincher but his movies have the tendency to feature the most beeped up masterminds, from John Doe to Tyler Durden and even counting "The Game" corporation, the plans are so far-fetched and yet never ruin their effectiveness whatever the effect. But that Amy one is really one of a kind, she looks a darling for feminists, then she's the total antithesis, by using her intelligence and boobs as weapons.
More than ever, our society lies on such polarized perceptions that you can't go beyond what the world wants to see. The woman gets away with everything, which is maybe the way to compensate the blow on feminism it makes, within its own wicked intelligence, it plays fair with the denounced archetypes and I would say about "Gone Girl" what I said about "Indecent Proposal", it's pure subversive brilliance.