"Wander Darkly" ambitious but more annoying than profound

Wander Darkly (2020)

Writer-director Tara Miele’s relationship drama “Wander Darkly” is ambitious in exploring trauma and grief through the memories of a relationship in collapse. If only the film were as cumulatively profound as it thinks it is. With a swelling score and a wrenching performance by Sienna Miller, it should be moving or give us more to feel. Instead, “Wander Darkly” is just annoying the more labyrinthine its unconscious-rooted structure grows. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," this is not. Hell, it's not even 1994's long-forgotten Richard Gere-Sharon Stone melodrama "Intersection."

Adrienne (Sienna Miller) and Matteo (Diego Luna) aren’t married, but they have just had a newborn, bought a home together, and are about to go out on their first date night in a while. Matteo initially forgets the occasion, beginning yet another argument for this couple to make them question why they are even together. On their way back from a party, everything changes with a car crash. When Adrienne wakes up convinced that she is outside of her own body and most likely dead, she finds herself in a purgatory through time and space. With Matteo the only one who can see her (as well as the Grim Reaper himself), they relieve their nonlinear memories by pivoting from reality to the past and explaining themselves.

All 97 minutes of “Wander Darkly” is about justifying that Adrienne and Matteo are meant to be together by seeing what made them fall apart. Was it Matteo’s flirtations with another woman (Aimee Carrero)? Was it Adrienne’s mother-in-law (Beth Grant) always interfering and knocking Matteo down for his failure as a father and boyfriend? Is the relationship even worth salvaging? Why would a film waste Vanessa Bayer in the most standard of roles as Adrienne’s best friend? The viewer becomes so lost (and baffled) in the internal rules of how Adrienne can walk through her present life and then relive her memories alongside Matteo. Somehow, she is able to talk to Matteo separately from the other people in their memories. At one point, Adrienne is even able to see her baby daughter as a teenager living without her mother. 

Director Tara Miele surely demonstrates ethereal style and sometimes fluid technique behind the camera, but at some point, there needs to be more emotional resonance at the core of the story. Through no fault of either performer who both try their damndest to make every moment feel tender and poignant, the “what if?” and the “what’s going on?” of it all become far less involving. Where “Wander Darkly” ends up is with a manipulative smoke-and-mirrors trick, even though it thinks it’s being deep and challenging.

Grade: C

Lionsgate is releasing “Wander Darkly” (97 min.) in select theaters and on demand on December 11, 2020.