Wander Darkly

Sienna Miller plays a woman who is terminally confused, which really doesn’t help the viewer.

Ghost of a chance: Sienna Miller is confused

The key line in Tara Miele's psychological romance is when Adrienne (Sienna Miller) turns on her boyfriend, Matteo (Diego Luna), and snaps: “Even me dying is not enough to get you to step up!” Adrienne is not happy about the way their relationship is going. Matteo seems forgetful, is not making enough money, is not taking their life together seriously. And when couples start arguing in a car at the outset of a movie, you know where it’s going. In the event, the film is like Ghost, but without the narrative cohesion. Or the humour.

Tara Miele, who directs from her own screenplay, is dealing with not just death, but maternity, honesty, love, memory and grief, fed through a chain of vignettes in which Sienna Miller performs a series of split-second costume changes. We, the audience, never know where we are, but then neither does Adrienne as she navigates the emotional slipstream of a terrible, traumatic episode.

It’s a brave director who thinks that she can keep her audience in the dark for so long, so the best way to approach Wander Darkly is to let it wash over you like a music video or a disturbing dream. And it’s a brave actress who is willing to play a woman who so hates being dead that she keeps on trying to kill herself. Quite how one can recommend what is essentially a two-hander in which a couple squabbles throughout while dissecting the road bumps of their life together is, well, nigh impossible. Sienna Miller, who does the emotional heavy lifting, is very good under the circumstances, and the camerawork is superlative. And there’s a lovely shot of some dolphins.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Sienna Miller, Diego Luna, Beth Grant, Vanessa Bayer, Aimee Carrero, Tory Kittles, James Landry Hébert, Dan Gill, Ethan Cohn, Lamont Thompson, Olivia Popp.

Dir Tara Miele, Pro Lynette Howell Taylor, Samantha Housman, Monica Levinson and Shivani Rawat, Screenplay Tara Miele, Ph Caroline Costa, Pro Des Katie Byron, Ed Tamara Meem and Alex O’Flinn, Music Alex Weston, Costumes Christopher Lawrence, Sound Frank Gaeta.

51 Entertainment/ShivHans Pictures-Universal Pictures.
97 mins. USA. 2020. Rel: 8 March 2021. Available on VOD. Cert. 15.