ISEEYOU
WhatdoesAnna
reallyseeasshe
gazesthroughthe
glass?Whatformof
reality–aboutthe
worldherselfand
therestofus
looking in? ‘WHAT I COME AWAY WITH IN
THE FILM IS: WHAT STORYDO WE TELL OURSELVES
ABOUT WHO WE ARE?’
Julianne Mooreon some kind of attempt at self-
validation. And I think that
the question of whether Anna really
wants to help, or whether she’s really
trying to vindicate her own point of
view, is an ambiguous one.”
Ambiguity, though, is just a step
away from confusion, and The Woman
In The Window was delayed earlier this
year after a test audience struggled to
understand the narrative. Wright
shot extra footage and tinkered with
his edit – now a lean, nail-biting 100
mins – so it would thrill as much as
the films it seeks to homage.
“It’s good to put a film up in front
of an audience, and to see how they
respond,” he says candidly. “I don’t
necessarily believe in wanting,
always, to play to the widest possible
demographic. I think it’s OK,
sometimes, to play to a minority, so
[m^lml\k^^gbg`l] also frustrate me. But
I think that I had probably created the
film as such a fever dream that
people didn’t know where they stood,
and were confused. We did additionalphotography – I always like to call it
that because ‘reshoots’ makes me
feel like I’ve got it wrong – and really
addressed some of those issues. I
think, in a way, you can get away with
stuff in books that you can’t in movies.
We’re a lot more tuned to truth in a
movie, perhaps, than we are in a novel- or it’s a different kind of truth.”
A different kind of truth is how
you might describe the twisty-turny,
ratcheting of The Woman In The
Window’s narrative. And it’s one that
wraps up without a franchise teaser - something of a delicious quaintness
in today’s movie landscape. “I’ve
been lucky enough to work on some
wonderful, original properties, and to
also work on some franchises. So
I see the value in both,” says Adams.
“I would hate to lose that level of
originality. I’m really happy that the
studios are still willing to get so
behind original work like this.”
THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW WILL BE
RELEASED TBC.fascinated by each other, and our
stories. There’s a column in the New
RhkdMbf^l that I love called ‘Sunday
Routine’ and it’s so banal! People are
like, ‘I wake up. I have two cups of
tea. I take my dog to the park. I come
back. I make pancakes for my kids...’
It’s fascinating.”
NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH
Moore’s introduction to the piece, along
with Wyatt Russell as Anna’s basement
tenant and de facto facilitator David, also
throws up other themes – the balm of
female friendship, the insidiousness of
gaslighting, the dismissal of a woman’s
voice (pertinent in this post-Weinstein
world) and the juxtaposition of our true
self and the one we project.
“When I created the character, it was
the idea of not being believed, and the
frustration that that creates, and that can
become gaslighting,” says Adams. “It’s
that sort of confusion that you create in
your brain, of not being believed. It was
really fascinating to explore that.”
“What I come away with from the
film is: what story do we tell ourselves
about who we are? What can we bear
to look at realistically? And what is
the fantasy that we’ve created for
ourselves?” says Moore. “Because
everybody has a story. You know, if you
ask somebody to tell you about their
past, you’ll notice that there might be
a certain pattern to a certain story that
they’re telling, and you think, ‘Huh.
Why do you think they choose to tell
this story tragically when actually, is it
a tragic story?’ You just kind of wonder:
why do people insist on telling this
fiction around themselves, and what
they consider to be a fake narrative?”
That idea of projecting a persona is
something that speaks to our current
fascination with social media, agrees
Wright. Can we believe what we see on
Instagram? Do we trust what Twitter
says? And, like Anna, wouldn’t we do
better if we stop looking out of digital
windows at other people’s lives and
concentrated on our own well-being?
“That’s exactly what I was interested
in!” he enthuses. “And not just social
media, but the fact that there are always
two sides, or many more sides, to every
story, and that people are so quick to
judge or come to conclusions based on
what they want or need – often based
APRIL 2020 | TOTAL FILMTHE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW