Fictional
male antiheroes like television's crime patriarchs Tony Soprano and Walter White have reigned for some time, but the antiheroine has only more recently had the opportunity to rise up -- and become the cause of her own downfall. And while a "bad woman" may once have meant a period-piece protagonist who prioritized herself over finding a husband, today's antiheroines are more complex, as the Netflix dark comedy "I Care a Lot" illustrates.
Rosamund Pike as the morally deficient professional carer Marla Grayson.
Rosamund Pike just picked up a Golden Globe for her portrayal of the film's icy-cool yet charismatic main character, Marla Grayson, a legal guardian who preys on seniors. Grayson sets the audience straight in her first few minutes on screen.
"Playing fair is a joke invented by rich people to keep the rest of us poor," she declares.
To avoid being exploited, Grayson exploits, building a company that places the eldery into her care while she drains their finances and cuts them off from their families. She does so with the help of an equally morally deficient doctor who feeds her new customers and a well-meaning, naive judge whose court orders are the strong arm in Grayson's elaborate system. She keeps portraits of her so-called "cash cows" tacked-up in her office, like the victims of a serial killer hung up on a detective's whiteboard.
'(She's) allowed to do the things that men have always been allowed to do'.
Grayson is polished and ruthless and operates under her own code of feminism -- she can swindle people as much as any man -- to reign terror on people's lives. She is also willfully stubborn and refuses to back down when she messes with the wrong senior citizen, pulling her into a deadly set of circumstances that she believes she can blackmail her way out of.
Yet, as the film's screenwriter J Blakeson notes in a recorded interview for Netflix, she's "smart and determined and focused and charismatic" -- all the qualities we tend to strive for.
But while we may relate more to vulnerable, self-destructive female leads like Marvel's crime-fighting private eye Jessica Jones and assassin-hunting Eve Polastri of "Killing Eve," or the brash dysfunction of the titular protagonist of "Fleabag," Grayson is more impenetrable.
