A too-pure young man, training to be a doctor, scion of the wealthiest imaginable family, meets a smoking hot young woman, but is she who she seems? His mother thinks not. The quickest way to describe The Girlfriend is to say that it\u2019s sort of perfect. The perspectives shift between that of Cherry, the girlfriend (Olivia Cooke), and that of Laura, the mother (Robin Wright, who also directs). Whoever\u2019s take you are watching, that\u2019s who you believe. Baroque events, blood and guts, flagrant lies \u2013 it all unfurls in exquisite interiors and idealised London street scenes.<\/p>\n
It is compulsive. I bit my nails to shreds. It\u2019s not clear who\u2019s the psychopath, but someone is \u2013 and the crisscrossing erotic tension gives it the inevitability of Greek tragedy. People this irresistible to one another never end up at peace.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a triangular love story,\u201d Wright begins, speaking to me from \u201cthe countryside\u201d; she is still based in the UK since shooting The Girlfriend last year. \u201cIn a different world, Laura and Cherry would have been best friends, because they\u2019re so alike. Their love for this one young man is from two different fields. A mother that\u2019s possessive and overprotective \u2013 is she just being paranoid about this girlfriend, or is the girlfriend not to be trusted?\u201d<\/p>\n
So far, so universal. \u201cThat\u2019s just intrinsic to being a mother,\u201d says Wright. \u201cOK, who\u2019s going to be good enough for my child? And it\u2019s going to be slim pickings.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018My mum has never liked my boyfriends at all\u2019 \u2026Olivia Cooke in The Girlfriend. Photograph: Christopher Raphael\/Prime<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not even just a mother-son thing, Cooke says, down the line from Mallorca where she is on holiday. \u201cMy mum, with boyfriends that me and my sister have had, has not liked them at all. Once a mum sniffs a malignancy in the person her son or daughter is with, it\u2019s hard for her to brush that aside. And I can read people pretty well \u2013 I\u2019ve never been out with anyone overtly hideous.\u201d<\/p>\n
But this story isn\u2019t that universal \u2013 the super-rich parents, Laura and Howard (Waleed Zuaiter), are in an open marriage, where Howard has a long-term lover but yearns for Laura\u2019s attention. Their son Daniel (Laurie Davidson), meanwhile, either has an earth-shattering connection with his girlfriend Cherry, or she\u2019s playing him. And there is a quasi-incestuous flavour to Laura and Daniel right at the centre.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in so much competition now with content,\u201d says Wright. \u201cHow racy everything is, how much shock value it has. We had to up the ante and have the mother kiss the son, which is so fucked up, so weird. And yet, it happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
So much hangs on the physicality of Laura and Cherry, their contrasting magnetism: Wright polished and elegant, always wearing camel; Cherry pneumatic and spellbinding, like a siren. \u201cHer sensuality, and the way she looks, was a whole monster itself,\u201d says Cooke. \u201cEspecially for me \u2013 I feel much more comfortable when the focus isn\u2019t on how I look. But maybe getting older [she is 31] has made me a bit more comfortable in my body; for a long time I was playing younger than I actually was, so there was more androgyny.\u201d<\/p>\n