Deborah Ross

Mad about Claire Foy

Steven Soderbergh’s latest feels like 98 minutes of mansplaining

issue 24 March 2018

Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, Unsane, is a psychological thriller about a woman who is incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital even though she claims to be perfectly sane. But is she? It was filmed fast, on an iPhone 7, and some aspects are worryingly thoughtless — its treatment of mental-health patients, for example, is remarkably Unsensitive. And it does descend into a plainly ridiculous, sub-par farce. But it is also, in parts, deliciously schlocky and it stars the wonderful Claire Foy, whom one hopes was paid decently. So shocking that she earned less than Matt Smith for The Crown, but as a positive person who likes to look on the bright side might I suggest that we celebrate the fact men are still doing so well? And throw a party or something?

Here, Foy plays the unlikely named Sawyer Valentini, who has relocated from Boston to Pennsylvania to escape David Strine (Joshua Leonard), the man who has been stalking her for two years and has made her life hell.

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