I Care a Lot: An Exposé on Girl Boss Feminism and Modern Inequality

*Contains spoilers*

Gone Girl’s master manipulator Amy was surely a tough act to follow, but Rosamund Pike delivers an even fiercer performance, with just the right balance of dark humour, in I Care A Lot. Unlike Gone Girl, which sets up its protagonist’s scheme as a form of revenge against her husband’s apathy towards their marriage, (allowing room for us, the viewers, to root for her), I Care A Lot presents its anti-hero, Marla Grayson, as someone who is impossible to sympathise with altogether. In her Golden Globe award speech, Pike slipped in at the end; “Maybe I just have to thank America’s broken legal system for making it possible to make stories like this.”

These “stories” refer to the existence of legal guardians who abuse their positions of power to exploit the finances of their vulnerable patients, especially elderly ones. The film paints an honest image of the profit-seeking incentives that paradoxically drive the ‘care’ industries. Marla pays quack doctors to diagnose rich elderly patients, who have little family or friendship ties, with dementia, so that she can become appointed as their guardian. Consequently, Marla is able to legally isolate these people in a care facility, (in which she herself owns shares), and then drain their personal assets to compensate her ‘care’.

The film opens with a monologue addressed to us, by Marla; “Look at you, sitting there. You think you’re good people… I used to be like you, thinking that working hard and playing fair would lead to success and happiness. It doesn’t.” This defines the capitalist world in which we live, where the only way to procure immense wealth is through exploiting those who are already the most vulnerable. 

In line with the corrupt system, Marla never suffers any penalty for her immoral motives; instead the film emphasises that she is able to thrive precisely because of her remorselessness and skills in manipulation. Frequently having slurs thrown at her, like “bitch” and “cunt”, from those whose lives she has ruined, Marla uses the guise of feminist empowerment in order to deflect her own responsibility. In a confrontation with the son of an elderly woman whom Marla has kidnapped under her guardianship, she barks; “Does it sting more that I’m a woman? That you got so soundly beaten in [the courtroom] by someone with a vagina?” The acts of caring, nurturing and guardianship are also typically held as feminine roles, while Marla is seen constantly vaping – a modern distortion of the phallic cigarette symbol. Through these portrayals, Blakeson suggests that Marla’s empowered-woman character is part of her deceit. Capitalizing on those who are already disempowered in society is hardly a feminist endeavour, so the film’s incorporation of these undertones clearly exposes how powerful people appropriate the values supported by ordinary people, in order to conceal their corruption.

 In the world of the film, Marla’s mistake isn’t her incessant money-hunger - it’s getting caught up with a member of the Russian mafia, Roman (Peter Dinklage), who turns out to be the son of one of her elderly captees, Mrs. Peterson (Dianne Wiest). Despite living through a series of life-threats - one of her doctors gets murdered, she drives her car off a bridge, and her girlfriend gets shot - Marla is not deterred by the deadliness of this career path. Instead, she’s all too aware that, “playing fair is a joke invented by rich people to keep the rest of us poor”, and she insists on winning - even against an experienced mafioso.  

Instead of paying Marla off (in 10 billion dollars) for the release of his mother from the care home, Roman ultimately proposes that they become business partners to turn her small scam into a country-wide operation. He tells her; “I hate you, but the money we could make”, which totally encompasses the cold-hearted lifelessness of mainstream business relations in our modern world.

 Marla is adamant on realising the classic girl-boss narrative which, in the real world, is propelled to encourage young women to work harder towards their own success. This narrative is also a cop-out of acknowledging the actual disadvantages faced by women, which often make this economic success harder to materialize, such as the enduring gender pay gap. The film culminates in Marla becoming a monstrous, cynically smiling girl boss CEO who tells her TV interviewee that, “there is no secret [to success], all it takes is hard work and determination”, finally becoming the embodiment of that satirized stereotype of the rich person preaching to the masses. This narrative is also applicable to the decades old American dream, which posits success and wealth as universally accessible through sheer determination, whilst ignoring the oppressive systems which obstruct that path for many.  

 Far from endorsing what it depicts, the film punishes Marla in an act of arbitrary fate rather than because she has learnt any moral lesson. She gets shot by the son of one of her patients, who has clearly been driven insane by his grief, yet the event happens so randomly that she appears to die as a martyr at the hands of a seeming lunatic. The film necessarily puts forth this representation in order to express the unjust reality of the healthcare and wider capitalist system; even if the bad guy gets taken down, it’s due to chance rather than any redemptory action, and the victims are never truly compensated. 

Released right at the peak of the pandemic, in February of 2021, and following the results of the recent US election, the film holds a critical position. I Care a Lot points a finger at the hypocrisy of the powerful, at the empty values they wave in the faces of oblivious, unsuspecting people, and at the perseverance of a depraved global structure which benefits from the oppression it creates.