Gone Girl

"Gone Girl" is most entertaining (and what fun that the fragrant Rosamund Pike is finally getting her big break), but for some reason it hasn't been marketed as a comedy. It was a slow Monday at the multiplex when I saw it, so the audience was probably not representative, but among my fellow-viewers there was a deplorable lack of  hilarity in response to the utterly daft storyline. People, I wanted to say, this is hilarious! I mean, who behaves like those characters? But maybe this is what adult behaviour looks like nowadays and I should get out more? Until possible future enlightenement on this point, the story will continue to remind me of something a child might have written: a young female child, an Amazing Amy perhaps, who's always been told she's very wonderful and very clever, and who gets carried away on a wave of self-esteem one fine day and writes a story about grown-ups doing very bad things and using very bad words, because she can, so there. Cool girl, gone girl, clever scribbling girl. It was only when the lawyer played by Tyler Perry showed up saying basically that (this is hilarious) that things fell into place as they could have done much earlier in the film. The lawyer could scarcely keep the grin off his face, and we get it - or if we don't, we should. Now, (SPOILER ALERT) of course,  the truly pressing question about this film is: how on earth does the fragrant Rosamund's character manage to achieve a precisely cut bob, by herself, in the middle of nowhere? Was there a sort of Bob-U-Cut among the prizes brought back by her stalker type, metrosexual hunter ex-boyfriend at the end of the day? We should be told. And until such a time as we are, what remains most striking for me about this film is the climactic exchange of c-words between the two leads. These uses of the c-word - you know, the one not unlike 'cut' in its general sound effect - is presumably what we are cautioned against by the 'very strong language' tag on the 18 rating. More importantly, this exchange between husband and wife confirms what some critics have said - the film is unnecessarily sexual - because it is here that the climax happens. This man and this woman are not made one flesh by their physical intimacy: they are made one curse by intimately sharing a taboo insult. The word cannot be forgotten, or erased. Once it's out, the game is up. There is no going gone again. Of course "Atonement", a fine film starring an emerald dress and a typewriter, made this point too, though not quite so brazenly. And wasn't it directed by the chap who dumped Rosamund once upon a time in real life? Serves it right, if so, to be trumped by Amazing Amy. Weirdly, the c-word face-off between the lead characters in "Gone Girl" gives the story a suitably comedic ending: the marriage is saved. Husband and wife might not live happily ever after, but they will live, and on a rock-solid foundation too, just a really nasty one, not to be attempted at home. But words are powerful, for better or for worse.