No one plays a bad guy quite like Rosamund Pike. She ticks all the boxes for the kind of nice, likeable character that you’d never suspect as having nefarious intentions: blue eyes, blonde hair and a perfect smile that puts you at ease. But having the type of face that people don’t typically associate with evil provides the ideal mask to conceal it. Maleficent cheekbones and wicked-witch warts won’t get you very far if you want to get away with crime in the real world. In a superficial society, it helps to look good if you want to get away with being bad.
In I Care A Lot, there’s only one hint in the appearance of Rosamund Pike’s Marla that she might be a predatory sociopath: her impeccably straightened, razor-sharp bob. The only feasible way to keep her hair as neat as it is would be to trim it every morning – now that’s weird. But, of course, the judge who defends her as a man attempts to release his elderly mother from her guardianship doesn’t notice the fresh cut. Instead, he calmly reassures him that “Marla Grayson is a well-respected professional guardian”.
Here’s the thing: Marla isn’t a very good guardian at all. She’s a con woman, whose grift is to get doctors to issue court orders that place vulnerable, elderly people under her control so that she can shove them into a care home while selling their assets and keeping the profits for herself. “All day, every day, I care,” Marla argues back to the poor man whose mother has become her victim in the courtroom. She’s not exactly lying. Marla does care a lot, but only about the money.
We can probably all agree that preying on the elderly to steal their assets and imprison them in care homes (once admitted, mobile phones are taken away and visitors are limited, if permitted at all) is in lowest-of-the-low territory, on par with kicking puppies and flooring a child to snag the ice cream man’s last 99 Flake. It’s a particular kind of cruelty that sets off alarm bells in any sane person’s mind, pitching sweet innocence against a severe lack of empathy and obscene selfishness. You’re supposed to hate people who do those kinds of things. Instead, Pike’s performance in I Care A Lot almost makes you root for her, disorientating the moral compass with her icy, blue stare and unrelenting determination. Reason tells you not to sympathise with the terrible woman who does terrible things; Pike’s commitment to the role tries its best to convince you otherwise.
When in the right role, Pike serves as a particularly brilliant magnet to knock your moral compass off kilter. In Gone Girl, she frames people for rape and murder, while actually committing some of those heinous crimes herself, and somehow manages to make part of you hope her character will get away with it. Her character’s actions are motivated by revenge in this instance, helping to justify any sympathy the viewer may feel towards her, but take a step back from the action and you’ll soon realise that you too have become a victim of her spell. As is the case in I Care A Lot, narration from Pike sways you into taking her side, or, at the very least, view things from her perspective. The “men are trash” rationale from Gone Girl turns into “the world is trash” in I Care A Lot. “I used to be like you, thinking that working hard and playing fair would lead to success and happiness,” says Marla to the audience in the opening scene. “It doesn’t. Playing fair is a joke invented by rich people to keep the rest of us poor.” Less than two minutes into the film, you’re already thinking, “Maybe she has a point.”
What’s that thing about an eye for an eye? Marla doesn’t have a point, of course. You can’t “what a cruel world” your way out of a prison sentence. But I’d rather watch Rosamund Pike get away with murder than anyone else. When it comes to villainy, she’s practically perfect in every way, calculating, cold and unreasonably captivating. Remember when Ted Bundy was first accused of being a serial killer? People didn’t want to believe it. He received fan mail, for God’s sake. The wickedest among us learn to master the art of likeability. Through half-concealed smiles when met with technically bad news and a fiendish glint in her eye, Pike has mastered the art of portraying the corrupt pretender, lulling audiences into a sense of sinister security as she enacts her evils. It’s both disconcerting and delicious to watch her lap up the material with glee, turning the despicable into the desirable, even if it’s just for a minute.
Marla picks on the wrong old person in I Care A Lot, putting her up against people who are even more reprehensible than she is. But no matter how many people the other villains murder, no one in I Care A Lot wears evil as well as Pike’s Marla. Prada? Pfft, that’s so 2006. These days, the devil’s sporting an impeccably straightened, razor-sharp bob.
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