The star of Netflix's new dark comedy explains what Amy Dunne and Marla Grayson have in common…and what they don’t.
‘I Care A Lot’ Has More in Common With ‘Gone Girl' Than Just Rosamund Pike
What do you get when you mix the psychopathy of Gone Girl's Amy Dunne, the dehumanizing capitalism of American Psycho, and the sapphic energy of A Simple Favor? Probably something akin to Netflix's deliciously dark comedy, I Care a Lot.
I Care a Lot is a vibrant, chaotic exploration into the business of caring. At the center of it all: Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike), a corrupt caregiver who forces her elderly clients into assisted living facilities and drains them of all they're worth. Everyone's on the take, from greedy doctors to facility coordinators to Marla's savvy business and life partner, Fran (Eiza Gonzáles). The only one who doesn't seem to be profiting from this horrific practice is a singular judge who is so easily duped into granting Marla custody of her victims that he doesn't warrant a bribe.
Marla is, above all else, a grifter. “You think you're good people,” she judges the viewer at the top of the film. “I used to be like you. Thinking that working hard and playing fair leads to success and happiness. It doesn't. Playing fair is a joke invented by rich people to keep the rest of us poor.” There are only two types of people in Marla's world: lions and lambs. Guess which one she is?
Throughout the film—which spirals delightfully out of control once Marla gets her hand on a client with mob connections—I kept thinking back to another hustler with a penchant for monologues and violence: Amy Dunne. Perhaps Rosamund Pike is right when she tells me it simply comes down to the fact that she plays both psychopaths, but I can't help thinking it's more than that. Marla Grayson is everything the Gone Girl antihero always wanted to be: successful, rich, and independent. When Marla asks everyone watching what they'd be willing to sacrifice to achieve their dreams, I imagine Amy would simply respond, everything.
Still, a sick part of me couldn't help but root for Gone Girl's spiteful housewife, while all I could root for during I Care a Lot was for Marla's demise—and her impeccable bob. For Pike, it's the opposite.
“Amy is a genuine sociopath who also commits murder. Now, Marla's done terrible things and her hustle is, frankly, appalling and odious, but she has lines that she won't cross,” Pike tells me over Zoom. “I think what they do have in common is that they're reprehensible characters who are fun to watch."
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Is it Marla's unrepentant agency that makes her so unsympathetic, yet commanding? “I think what's interesting about I Care a Lot is that Marla is weaponizing all the traditional tropes of being a woman," Pike explains. "The idea that woman is nurturing and caring, Marla turns that into a weapon to monetize. She turns that caring into a business model, rather than something innate.”
Pike wonders aloud if Nick Dunne's (Ben Affleck) infidelity makes it easier for audiences to empathize with Amy, despite the brutal acts she commits in Gone Girl. Meanwhile, Marla embodies ambition in a way we've only previously seen on screen with men (think Leonardo DiCaprio's Wolf of Wall Street). “Marla is a woman who, interestingly, never deploys sexuality to get what she wants, which I admire,” the actor muses. “The femme fatale role usually does. Amy does."
As we speak, I can't help but come around to Pike's determination that she's the true throughline that connects Amy and Marla. Not simply because she owns their face, but for the control over every aspect of the character, from Marla's tailored suits to her razor-sharp haircut to the Spin classes she attends in the film. “There was something so aggressively ambitious in the whole nature of the class,” Pike explains “The competitive kind of glory of sweating it out, which I found very suited to Marla.”
Pike even did all of Marla's grueling stunts, while a double stood by. “I wouldn't have let anyone take over Marla in those moments because they're too crucial,” she says. “They're too expressive of her grit.”
Rosamund Pike has always been a chameleon, able to transform from cunning Bond Girl to wide-eyed Jane Bennet without missing a beat, but there's something about watching her unapologetically wade into depths of depravity that I could watch over and over again.
Stream ‘I Care A Lot’ on Netflix.
Emily Tannenbaum is an entertainment editor, critic, and screenwriter living in L.A. Follow her on Twitter.
This story originally appeared on: Glamour - Author:Emily Tannenbaum
