Little White Lies Issue 104

Directed by ZOË KRAVITZ Starring NAOMI ACKIE, CHANNING TATUM, ADRIA ARJONA Released 23 AUGUST This may look like a review, but it is not a review. I’m here to offer you a little guiding hand to this our current issue, inspired by the film Blink Twice, which has been written and directed by Zoë Kravitz. We’ve tried to make this issue as spoiler-free as possible, and our celebration of the film consists largely of discussions about the craft and stories about its meanings. It opens on two accident-prone service industry workers Frida (Naomi Ackie) and Jess (Alia Shawkat) blagging their way into a cocktail reception hosted by Slater King (Channing Tatum), the adorable face of global tech concern, King-Tech. After glasses have been clinked and canapés have been quaffed, Frida captures a quiet…

Zoë Kravitz’s Blink Twice began life as a “fever dream novella” that she worked on throughout the years with co-writer E.T. Feigenbaum, who would then become her showrunner on the criminally underrated series High Fidelity. After that series came to an abrupt end, they re-upped their efforts to bring her directorial debut to the screen with Kravitz assembling a starry ensemble led by Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum. Ackie plays Frida, a nail artist and waitress who, along with friend Jess (Alia Shawkat), seizes the opportunity to make the acquaintance of notorious tech billionaire Slater King (Tatum). They accept an invitation to his private island alongside a fun-loving crew of misfits only to discover that there is a rot in the luxurious hacienda’s foundation. Kravitz’s satirical thriller distinguishes her as…

For a film like Blink Twice, which opens on a close-up of a lizard, it is apt that its star Naomi Ackie is a chameleon. The classically-trained Londoner cut her teeth with a host of scene-stealing and idiosyncratic performances in Doctor Who and The End of The F**king World, winning a BAFTA for the latter. She followed those up as the star of the 3rd season of Master Of None, which played tribute to classic Ingmar Bergman, prior to disappearing into the title role of Kasi Lemmons’ biopic, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody. In Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut she plays Frida, a struggling waitress and nail artist who is swept off her feet by the enigmatic tech mogul Slater King (Channing Tatum) only to discover that something is…

In June of this year, I read Thomas Hardy’s ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ for the first time. Cultural osmosis meant I was vaguely aware that innocent young Tess met a moralistically Victorian fate. Yet I wasn’t prepared for the cruelty with which Tess, having been raped as a teenager, is discarded by her new husband once he discovers the truth. There’s a sobering irony in that the most prominent adaptation of the novel is Tess (1979), directed by one Roman Polanski. Though the story is set in England, the film was shot in France because Polanski was unable to work in the UK. If he had, he would likely have been extradited to the US to be sentenced for raping a 13-year-old girl. Last year, the ostensibly ‘cancelled’ Polanski premiered…

I have a confession to make. For a long time, I wasn’t a fan of Channing Tatum. In fact, I actively disliked him. As a self-serious emo teenager around the time the Step Up franchise backflipped into cinemas, I strongly opposed any sort of jock or jock-adjacent content, and Tatum, the body-popping male lead, was Public Enemy Number One. I also found the teen Shakespeare comedy She’s The Man, in which he also featured that year, desperately unfunny, so he never really stood a chance. I had already dismissed him as a corny hypermasculine celebrity with nothing to offer a young woman who was deep into her Panic! at the Disco phase. It wasn’t until 2012 that I began to thaw. By that point I was a 20-year-old student working…

Her role in Richard Linklater’s 2023 film, Hit Man, launched Adria Arjona into the stratosphere, having been a mainstay of quality action-thrillers for over a decade. Her role as badass reality TV star Sarah in Blink Twice presents another string to her considerable bow. LWLies: What was your response when you first read the script for Blink Twice? Arjona: I was impressed, and I felt like I hadn’t read anything like it before. I absolutely loved Sarah’s arc. You’ve made quite a few films where you play badass women. What made the role of Sarah feel different? At the beginning of the movie Sarah is very much fighting for herself. You could maybe say she’s a little bit selfish in terms of the outcome she wants from going to this…