Zoe Kravitz’s Blink Twice is the film brat summer needed

It should’ve been called Pussy Island. The provocative jab, a working title that straddles the line between feminist reclamation and sexist objectification, is a perfect encapsulation of the darkly funny and righteously furious tone of Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut. Instead, it’s called Blink Twice. Nondescript, generic, broadly inoffensive. Just like the marketing departments at major film studios like it.

“It’s not a fight I’m fighting right now,” a resigned Kravitz says of the title change, from her home in New York. “I feel like the spirit of ‘Pussy Island’ is in the film, so if that’s the way to get this feeling across, then you don’t have to say it so literally. It still lives on.”

Kravitz directs partner Channing Tatum on the set of Blink Twice.Credit: Carlos Somonte

What’s in a name, after all? But in this “brat summer”, that catch-all term reflecting the current female desire for unapologetic hedonism, Dionysian recklessness and the right to be messy without fear or judgment, inspired by British pop star Charli XCX’s hit album (Brat), it feels like a missed opportunity. The title Pussy Island taps into a prevailing cultural mood; it surely would’ve put people in cinema seats. Blink Twice? We’ll see.

“I really believe in collective consciousness, so I always feel that in every moment there’s a certain frequency or energy that we’re all tuned into and I feel like that definitely feels like … yes,” says Kravitz of her film’s alignment with brat summer.

“That’s kind of what I wanted to make a film about, which is what happens when women stop behaving, when we stop playing by these rules we’ve been given. So I definitely think it feels in line with brat summer.”

Frida (Naomi Ackie) lands in deep water when she accepts an invitation to a tycoon’s private island.Credit:

Directed by Kravitz from a script she co-wrote with Eric “E.T.” Feigenbaum, the film’s story centres on broke cocktail waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie). She is, like any number of people whose priorities have been skewed by influencer culture and late-stage capitalism, illiterate to current affairs but impressed by proximity to fame and fortune. One evening, while working a high-class catering gig, Frida makes a connection with the toxic-yet-charming tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum), who’s in the midst of an apology tour after being cancelled for numerous undisclosed discretions.

King immediately invites Frida and her friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) to join his party of young women (Adria Arjona, Liz Caribel, Trew Mullen) and ageing rich bro’s (Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osment, Simon Rex) at his private island, and the gang are suddenly whisked to a remote resort where the sun-dappled days merge into an unending haze of blissful, intoxicated excess.

Of course, nothing is as it seems. Before long, the tropical escapist vibes subside and, as Frida’s sobriety returns, the film transforms into a sinister and frenetic psychological thriller. In Kravitz’s deft hands Blink Twice echoes elements of Get Out’s social horror, Midsommar’s woozy paranoia and a Tarantino revenge flick seething with fury over male sexual entitlement and male violence against women.

Though the film could be inspired by any number of stories of high-powered men behaving criminally that emerged in the wake of #MeToo, the obvious parallels are to Epstein island, that horrendous site of abuse once owned by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein. Kravitz’s initial idea, however, emerged long before such stories became headline news, fuelled by her own frustrations around society’s skewed power dynamics.

Naomi Ackie as Frida and Adria Arjona as Sarah.Credit: Carlos Somonte

“It was more of a feeling at first, just having this array of emotions and not really knowing where to put them. I started writing this in 2017, so a little bit beforehand what felt like a big shift in the zeitgeist around conversations about power dynamics and #MeToo, #TimesUp, all of that,” says Kravitz, now 35.

“I think prior to that shift I was just feeling a combination of anxiety, anger and confusion around power dynamics. I wrote down ‘Pussy Island’ first – just the concept of it, just those words – and that led me to this story that turned into the film.”

The script mutated heavily in the years after the first outline was completed in 2017. “Me and my writing partner Eric had to rewrite over and over again because the conversation culturally kept changing, which was amazing, actually,” says Kravitz. “But having to adapt to the state of the world, and the conversations we were having, was a really interesting thing when you’re writing about a living and breathing moment in history.”

The result is a thematically hefty and ambitious project, particularly for a first-time director. With its wide-angle shots, Steadicam looseness and saturated colour palette, Kravitz brings an assured auteurist touch to the film. This is someone with a clear vision and the taste to achieve it. Of course, industry contacts help.

“Steven Soderbergh is a great mentor of mine. He watched an early cut and gave me really fantastic notes and was really encouraging,” says Kravitz.

“Ramy Youssef gave me some great notes. Ilana Glazer. Just friends of mine that have been around over the many years of me writing this and knew the story already, which was helpful for them to understand what I was trying to make.

“Donald Glover, too. He was someone who gave me great notes. It was great to have friends who I love and respect and that make fantastic art themselves.”

“I would have been talking about it with whoever I was with, because when you’re directing something you’re obsessed with it,” says Kravitz.Credit: Carlos Somonte

If Blink Twice is Kravitz’s filmmaking debut, she’s not a novice to the medium. The daughter of actress Lisa Bonet and rock star Lenny Kravitz, she has already carved a particular avenue for herself on screen – it’s in those heavy eyes, dripping with unimpressed judgment; in her bohemian aesthetic; in her detached demeanour, cultivated in childhood where she split time between her divorced parents’ homes in LA’s hippie-ish Topanga Canyon, trendy Manhattan and Miami.

Her first role out of acting school, at 18, was playing a lackadaisical Goth babysitter in the romcom No Reservations with Catherine Zeta-Jones, but her profile expanded exponentially with roles in X-Men: First Class, the Divergent trilogy and Hulu’s criminally underrated reboot of High Fidelity, a project on which she was also a producer.

She’s also a musician as part of the R&B duo Lolawolf, and co-wrote the track Lavender Haze on friend Taylor Swift’s Midnights. A long-promised solo debut with Jack Antonoff is still in the works. “There’s a lot of unfinished songs sitting around somewhere, maybe I’ll get to that as well,” she says.

Kravitz, with star Channing Tatum, at the film’s Los Angeles premiere.Credit: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

Immediately prior to Blink Twice, Kravitz was coming off her biggest roles to date, playing Bonnie Carlson in Big Little Lies and Catwoman/Selina Kyle opposite Robert Pattinson in 2022’s The Batman. In the coming months she’ll begin shooting Darren Aronofsky’s next epic, Caught Stealing.

Like any actor-turned-director, she had originally considered putting herself in Blink Twice. “I think early on I was writing more from my perspective in early drafts for Frida. But the more I developed the script I decided I wanted to direct it, so that really freed my mind from writing it for me just out of habit,” she says. “By the time I finished the script I knew I wasn’t going to star in it. I wanted to direct it and I had written it specifically not for me.”

Moving between each of her creative modes of actor, writer, director, musician and model wasn’t a problem while making Blink Twice, she says, as they all fed into each other.

“I was always inspired by the work I was doing at the same time, the directors I was working with, the characters I was playing. As an actor, there’s time between projects where you’re really not doing anything and I like to be busy, so I was very thankful to have something that I knew I could just delve back into. Specifically during COVID, too, I was so thankful to have something to focus on.”

Beyond her many hats, another on-set distraction might’ve been love. Blink Twice, after all, is the film on which Kravitz met her now partner, actor Channing Tatum. The pair have since become a tabloid staple, adorably loved up, pictured riding tandem bikes through New York streets or picking their favourite art-house DVDs (“We love Cassavetes”) for Criterion’s beloved “closet picks” videos.

The relationship has also proved professionally simpatico. For Tatum, perhaps still best known for his singlet-heavy turns in Step Up and the Magic Mike films, Kravitz has gifted him with the best role of his career to date, a chance to use his infamous charm for sinister reasons. A closing monologue, in which Tatum’s Slater King speaks to the bitter entitlement of men cancelled by their own heinous wrongdoings, railing against a world that won’t accept their “I’m sorrys” as penance enough, is chilling.

Channing Tatum plays troubled tech bro Slater King in Blink Twice. “Chan’s performance is phenomenal,” says Kravitz.Credit:

“I think that’s part of the reason I wanted him to do it. It’s always exciting when you see actors do things you haven’t seen them do before,” says Kravitz. “I think the character Slater King is an incredibly complex one. I knew that he also had to be someone who was quite charming and someone you felt safe with, that Frida would feel safe. That’s usually the kind of role that Chan plays because he is warm and charismatic and kind and charming, and so I thought it would be interesting to see that flipped on its head.”

The idea of working with a romantic partner has its nay-sayers but Kravitz says she cherished the experience. “Chan has said this before but I think it’s true: I think having some kind of challenge to do together as a couple is a great way to test the relationship, and if you enjoy doing it together I think that really does say a lot,” Kravitz says.

“He was an incredible producer and an incredible actor and it was actually really fun to do something that we both cared about so much, and get to support each other in these different ways.”

But what about once filming wrapped for the day? Did they not get tired of talking about the work at home?

“I would have been talking about it with whoever I was with because when you’re directing something you’re obsessed with it and you don’t really think about anything else, you’ve got so much on your plate,” says Kravitz.

“So I’m glad it was Chan, but it could have been a cat or a houseplant. I would have just been talking to whoever was near me about the shots and what we were going to do the next day, or how it didn’t go right that day, or how we were going to fix the problem. That’s just kind of what it’s like when you’re directing a film.”

When not even Channing Tatum can prove a distraction? You’re officially on Pussy Island.

Blink Twice opens in cinemas on Thursday.

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