A Simple Favor

Paul Feig’s film comes from Darcey Bell’s novel, yet its most visible device is not in the book. Stephanie being a video blogger is screenwriter Jessica Sharzer’s solution, and by the novelist’s own account the aim was to avoid voice-over narration. The pieces to camera are not decoration, they stand in for that voice-over. That is why Stephanie keeps addressing her followers in the middle of a missing person case. Emily’s menswear does its work before the script does. The idea came from Blake Lively; costume designer Renée Ehrlich Kalfus describes Feig’s own way of dressing feeding into it, and says the suits are one off vintage pieces pulled from Ralph Lauren’s men’s archive. The character’s power reads off the cloth before any line explains it. The Connecticut town was built in Toronto. After seeing the film, Bell wrote that what pleased her most was that the joke had landed, since readers of the novel had mostly missed its comedy. Under the closing credits is Laisse tomber les filles, written by Serge Gainsbourg for France Gall in 1964. A good fit if you read the bright, unchanging look as a choice rather than a mistake once the story turns grim. Not for anyone expecting the screws to tighten after Emily vanishes, because Feig opens the floor to comedy instead.