While She Was Out, directed by Susan Montford

Ever see an Olympic race in which one guy falls and, in the process, takes out two or three others? That’s what came to mind when I watched Susan Montford’s While She Was Out, starring Kim Basinger. Everybody is doing their jobs perfectly well, telling a serviceable story about a beaten-down woman regaining her self-respect through violence, when the director loses her footing and takes everybody down with her. By the end of the film, I was very frustrated, because a good movie was so thoroughly destroyed by its director’s excesses.
Kim Basinger has emerged in the last ten years or so as a solid actress who has long since shaken off her eye candy status as she’s gotten older. These days, with heartbreaking performances in L.A. Confidential, Cellular, and The Door in the Floor, she has perfected the art of playing deeply wounded people. Her willingness- her eagerness- to embrace fragility and vulnerability denotes a maturity and bravery that few actors have. She has already played the sexpot beauty queen. Now she wants to act.
Her performance as Della in While She Was Out is fascinating to watch. She is a housewife whose love for her children is as obvious as her hatred for her oafish, abusive husband (grossly overplayed by Craig Sheffer). She would, of course, never express her frustrations with her husband, because she has been systematically torn down bit by bit until she has no self-respect left. As she interacts with the rest of the world, she can barely bring herself to look others in the eye. When a dismissive coffee shop employee spells her name wrong on an order, she doesn’t bother to correct her.
Della does take an occasional stand now and then. During the Christmas season, as she looks for a parking space at the mall, she finds that an inconsiderate soul has taken up two spaces. Della writes an indignant note and leaves it on the windshield. Her angry letter, of course, contains no profanity or threats. How could it? It’s written by a real-life Marge Simpson.
But it appears that the note was bad enough to spark the ire of the car’s owner, an unpleasant, gawky punk named Chuckie, played by Lukas Haas. Chuckie and his three friends confront Della in the now-abandoned parking lot after the mall has closed. Chuckie pulls a gun, attracting the attention of a nearby security guard. A brief skirmish ends with the guard dead and Della on the run.
With Chuckie in hot pursuit, Della drives into a deserted construction site on the edge of the forest. She crashes her vehicle, so she proceeds to get out and run, being sure to grab a small toolbox from the car as her only means of defense. As the four hoods stalk her in the dark forest, Della finds herself forced to kill the young men, one by one.
So there you have it: a simple story made more complex by interesting characters and strong actors. Along with Basinger’s transformation from victim to predator, Lukas Haas turns in an interesting performance as Chuckie. Chuckie certainly is different from most villains. He is not physically intimidating, nor is he particularly bright. He is just a punk who has let the situation get away from him. As the night wears on and Chuckie’s friends are slowly picked off, he begins to understand Della. He instinctively knows who she is. In spite of her newfound prowess at killing, Chuckie knows that Della is inherently a victim, and realizes that he must play on that if he is going to defeat her. The final confrontation between them is the best scene in the film, as it should be.
These two strong performances are, unfortunately, completely undercut by the poor instincts of a first-time director. Susan Montford makes strong choices at the beginning of the film, making sure the audience spends a good deal of time with Della, really getting to know her before she’s thrown into this nightmarish situation.
Once the plot kicks in, though, Montford seems to forget the genre in which she is working. What begins as a tidy little thriller becomes a grisly horror film, as Della dispatches each punk in the goriest way possible. She beats one man with a tire iron; she delivers the killing blow by shoving the iron up into the man’s nose, embedding it into his brain. She kills another with a screwdriver through the back of the neck. And, of course, it just wouldn’t be right if said screwdriver didn’t rip completely through the back of his throat and poke out his mouth.
After a certain point, we feel as if we’ve wandered into a Friday the 13th film by mistake. Our concern for Della eventually goes out the window as she proves that she is more than a match for these idiots. As they begin to fear for their lives, I actually found myself more concerned for them then for Della. I don’t think that is what was intended.
That, I think, is the primary problem with the film. The director becomes so focused on doing things that are “cool,” that she forgets what is at the heart of the film: the physical and emotional plight of her main character. With each brutal death, we are a little further removed from Della.
The final scene between Della and Chuckie thankfully brings us back to where we started. But, again, Montford undercuts this with an attempt at “awesomeness.” As Della returns home, she is faced once again with her horrible husband. Of course, with Della’s new self-confidence, she is in no mood for this man’s shit. So, she stands up to him, as we would expect. However, the manner in which she stands up to him belongs in another movie entirely. And then the movie is over. And my heart sank.
The final shot left such a sour taste in my mouth that I nearly forgot all about the hard, earnest work done by Kim Basinger. Perhaps that is why the film frustrates me so much. Montford, who displays a fair amount of potential as a director, sacrifices a good story and strong characters in favor of cheap thrills and theatrics. Perhaps in her next film- and I do hope she makes one- she will learn to get out of her own way and trust the inherent power of the material, rather than try to shape it and make it what she wants it to be. She should not be afraid to let it just be what it is.