Set in the 1970s, Woman of the Hour recounts the real story of how aspiring actress Cheryl Bradshaw (Anna Kendrick) and serial killer Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto) met on the game show, ‘The Dating Game.’
Woman of the Hour
Anna Kendrick (director), Ian MacAllister McDonald (writer), Zach Kuperstein (cinematography), Andy Canny (editor)
Anna Kendrick, Tony Hale, Daniel Zovatto, Nicolette Robinson (cast)
September 8, 2023 (TIFF)
Content advisory: sexual assault, murder, gender discrimination
The power of cinema is that it’s often the start of a conversation. Because of its relative accessibility, movies can open our minds to history that we never would have even thought about. Woman of the Hour is the start of one such conversation.
I was unaware of the serial killer Rodney Alcala and the fact that he was allowed to run rampant for years despite survivors reporting him for his crimes. The film focuses on multiple angles—among them are Alcala’s ability to lure his victims with his photography skills and seeming charm as well as his style of violence. We also follow Cheryl Bradshaw’s desperation to break through as an actor, and how her hope for a career leads her to have an uncanny encounter with Alcala. Finally, we see how the system is stacked against women, be it when they’re trying to maintain boundaries at work and in relationships or when they try to bring Alcala to justice.
The story is bizarre, and it’s hard to believe Woman of the Hour is based on reality. How did a man, who was already a convicted sex offender, end up on the reality tv show, ‘The Dating Game,’ where Cheryl meets him? It’s a remarkable failing across systems, and we see one of the most tense and stressful scenes about how women often have to navigate a world with threatening and angry men.
The film is compact and contained, and yet at times I felt like it was a little too slow. I also felt there were times Woman of the Hour could have added more substance to the story. Despite its tight runtime, the story needed to be more focused. The juxtaposition of how a young actress tries to avoid being exploited against a serial killer running rampant felt superfluous. We know the gender dynamics of every industry, especially the entertainment industry, is toxic and wrong, and little progress has been made to fix it in the past 50 years. The emphasis on sexism in Hollywood detracted from the main story, which is that for years people and survivors had reported Alcala for his horrific crimes, and the police did nothing. The police believe he could have up to 130 victims. That’s horrifying and a much stronger story that Woman of the Hour should have delved into further.
We see only one person, an audience member named Laura, try and report Alcala during the film, and we learn that this woman had tried to do so earlier without success, but we needed to see more of that — especially once you learn several survivors and loved ones had come forward about Alcala. I understand that may not have been the story the filmmakers wanted to tell, and yet it felt like an essential and, unfortunately still relevant, aspect of the story had been left out.
Daniel Zovatto, who plays Alcala, is disturbing and creepy in the film. He does a really good job, almost too good. Kendrick is best when she’s playing Cheryl as bubbly—I think she could have emoted more in a couple of scenes. I was disappointed in Nicolette Robinson who has a small but significant role as Laura. She needed more emotion in her eyes; her performance was too restrained.
Woman of the Hour is Kendrick’s directorial debut and she shows us why it’s important that a woman directed this story. There is nothing gratuitous nor lascivious here, and she handles the subject-matter with delicacy, even when highlighting the distressing elements. The film is fairly accomplished yet simple—Kendrick doesn’t try anything gimmicky to convey the themes of the story. There’s a bit of back and forth in the timeline, which came across a little disjointed at times, but not enough to confuse the viewer.
I do think Kendrick missed a couple of really hard-hitting moments. There’s a scene where Cheryl, who is upset about being on ‘The Dating Game’and uncomfortable about being on display, steps on to a stage that revolves towards the awaiting audience. Kendrick frames herself from the back of her head, when we could have learnt so much more about Cheryl had we seen her face transform from backstage to front of camera. Another moment is a tense scene between Alcala and Cheryl at a bar, which should have been shot a little more tightly. The scene following that one though was superb.
Woman of the Hour packs in a lot, and though I think the story should have been more contained, and some of the performances were underwhelming, it delivers a hard-hitting, and all-too relevant lesson that history will keep repeating itself if we do not learn from it. The film shows Kendrick at the start of her directing career, and we can already see that she has a steady hand behind the camera. It will be interesting to watch where her directing interests take her next.
