THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW
THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW I Joe Wright’s delayed agoraphobia drama has new resonance.
Behind the curtain on Joe Wright’s timely adaptation.
When Teasers last spoke to director Joe Wright in March 2020 about his one-set thriller charting the psychological fallout after a curtain-twitching New Yorker (Amy Adams) suspects her neighbour of murder, we were discussing the plight of the agoraphobic protagonist from a very different perspective.
Wright’s lushly lensed and meticulously sound-designed Hitchcockian piece was imminently heading to cinemas, and the story of a woman trapped in a Groundhog Day existence within her own home was something to be viewed with an outsider’s interest. A year later, his project will debut on a streaming platform and now pandemic-wise audiences may have considerably more understanding of the cognitive dissonance, boredom and fear of the outside world suffered by Adams’ Anna.
“When we were developing the script and in the edit, we were making sure that we really conveyed the agoraphobia, the meaning of it, and how she dealt with not being able to leave the house, because it was such an extraordinary thing then,” says Wright. “Now we all know what it’s like to not be able to leave the house, and for our days to feel like a kind of continuous nightmarish cycle of bed and food and, for some, alcohol.”
The premise of Anna’s predicament evokes Rear Window, a comparison Wright is not averse to as someone inspired by Hitch’s work. “I kind of return to Hitchcock with every movie, I think. But I was also thinking about Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped. I’m fascinated by form and so the idea of making a film that took place in this one house excited me.” Wright also
wanted his film to wrongfoot viewers audibly. “Audiences are all very image-literate now. We’ve been taught to read an image in an instant, but the aural world, somehow, can creep up on us, and affect our feelings, rather than our critical mind, in a way that I find really interesting and exciting.”
As the film is premiering on Netflix, Wright – a self-confessed cinema junkie – will want you turning those sound bars right up to enjoy Paul Carter’s aural design and Danny Elfman’s score. “Skipping the theatrical release element of [the film’s] life is a shame, but [filmmakers] make work to communicate with an audience, and certainly Netflix is an amazing way of communicating with a very, very large audience.”
And now that we’ve all been through the trauma of being trapped in our houses, Wright is keen to look for projects that aren’t as emotionally taxing. “I just want to make films that are kind and gentle, and full of love and light – that can give me hope. I want to live in the light a bit and make films that are just about the intimacy of our lives, and how we, as humans, can connect with each other, and how we’ve often failed to connect with each other. And that’s the tragedy.” JC
‘I KIND OF RETURN TO HITCHCOCK WITH EVERY MOVIE, I THINK’ JOE WRIGHT
ETA | 14 MAY / THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW STREAMS ON NETFLIX NEXT MONTH.