Year: 2015
Directed by: Fouad Mikati
Written by: Patricia Beauchamp & Joe Gossett
A small town nurse Miranda is preparing for her blind date, when a man she mistakes for her date rapes her. The man is sentenced to prison, but Miranda's life is falling apart. Then she starts visiting the man in prison to confront him and her fears, but she doesn't leave it just at that.
I saw the trailer for this film last year and I thought hey, that reminds me a lot of Gone Girl. Of course it's slightly different, for example, Gone Girl is written better. But it has similarities, like Rosamund Pike. Her character seems to be Amy from Gone Girl - again!
I've read it a million times online and I can now say it myself, the plot of Return to Sender is pretty standard. I don't even usually watch movies where the two main themes are rape and revenge, because they tend to go the same way over and over again. Return to Sender has it's differences, mostly the character of Miranda, who I'm going to talk about later. But the thing is those little details don't matter that much when the plot has been repeated million times.
The character, Miranda is interesting in a lot of ways. She seems likeable, but it's hard to say why. She has friends and she's a nurse, so clearly there's something nice about her. There also seems to be something off about her. She seems to be very careful about few things. She seems very distant to the viewer. When she starts visiting the rapist, she seems even more distant. We see what makes her go to him, but we still don't know the exact reason. Of course we can guess it, because it's easy to expect that, but still it's very confusing for a moment. The thing about Miranda is that she seems to be this nice nurse but you can't help but feel there's something weird about her. Trust that instinct. But that's what makes her character more interesting - except that she's now too close to Amy. If Miranda had been played by any other actress, maybe that connection wouldn't be so easy to make. Of course she is good at playing this kind of characters. Rosamund Pike is good at being weirdly and calmly scary.
And the movie is timed very well. It's not exactly a long film, but the weird relationship between Miranda and William kept going for a while, so I almost thought I had figured the movie out all wrong. Well, I wasn't wrong, but making that even that one small moment longer made it feel like wait a minute, what is going on? That's one important thing about structure - you change something in the usual timed structure of the film and it feels weird, because we are so used to that typical tempo.
What's mostly wrong about it is the timing. People weren't over Gone Girl when this one came out, so obviously everyone is starting to compare it to Gone Girl in their heads. And comparing to Gone Girl, Return to Sender doesn't stand a chance.
Return to Sender is worth a watch, if you haven't seen too many "rape & revenge" type of movies, or if you really like them. If you're bored with them, then it's not for you.
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
7 / 10
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