Writing in his seminal 1925 monograph The Gift, the anthropologist Marcel Mauss describes a gift as “the present generously given even when, in the gesture accompanying the transaction, there is only a polite fiction, formalism, and social deceit, and when really there is obligation and economic self-interest.” Mauss’s argument, which is rooted in his study of archaic societies, the giving of gifts is not the gesture of generosity we tend to see it as in modern Western society, but rather is a means of creating a relationship through obligation, the most important being reciprocity. Or, to put it in the words of scholar Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli, “the gift can also be seen as an act of aggression, establishing a ‘monstrous relation’ that can only be severed with heavy consequences.”

“Monstrous relation” is perhaps the perfect phrase to describe what develops between the central characters of actor/writer Joel Edgerton’s impressive directorial debut The Gift, and what makes the film so engaging is the way it constantly shifts the nature of the relationship’s monstrousness, leading you to believe for some time that one person is the monster when, in fact, it has been the other person all along.

The film’s apparent protagonist is Simon (Jason Bateman), a successful marketing executive who has just taken a high-paying new job with a computer security firm. The job has taken him and his wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall) from Chicago to southern California near the small town where Simon grew up. They buy an impressive, but somewhat cold-looking mid-century modern house in the fashionable So-Cal hills, and almost immediately they bump into a man named Gordon (Joel Edgerton) with whom Simon went to high school. Simon doesn’t recognize him at first, even though Gordon immediately recognizes him, and they have the slightly awkward exchange that people have in public places when they run into those they haven’t seen in years and have subsequently forgotten.

Soon thereafter Gordo starts showing up unannounced at Simon and Robyn’s house and leaving gifts for them, starting with a bottle of wine and later some goldfish for their exterior pond. Gordon, or Gordo as he is nicknamed, seems nice enough, but he has a social oddness about him, a lack of awareness that causes him to linger too long and assume too much; his sincerity is unequivocal, but also a little too intense. He has a sadness about him, but he also exudes a slightly creepy vibe you can’t shake off. Robyn, who has left behind a design company she was running to stay home and manage their new house and hopefully have a baby, politely indulges Gordo’s unannounced stopovers, partially because she feels sorry for him and partially because she is lonely. It is revealed later in the film that she has battled depression and addiction to pills, some of which is related to her having had a miscarriage the previous year, so keeping busy is important, and Gordo offers her some respite from the daily doldrums of being home alone.

At this point, it seems like The Gift could go in a number of directions. It could possibly develop into a love triangle of sorts, or perhaps a Fatal Attraction-style stalker film, which it begins to most closely resemble as Gordo’s behavior becomes more and more strange, veering from social awkwardness to moments of menace. Simon and Robyn feel the pressure to reciprocate Gordo’s gifts (he also helps out around the house, setting up their new TV for them while Simon is at work), and they have him over for dinner and then accept an invitation to his house. There is a constant unease about the relationship, as Simon clearly wants nothing to do with him while Gordo indicates an intense desire to be friends, complimenting Simon and Robyn to the point of embarrassment. When Robyn presses Simon for information about his time with Gordo in high school, Simon reveals little, except that Gordo was considering an oddball and was nicknamed “Weirdo.”

About midway through the film, Simon feels pushed too far by Gordo’s benign-yet-threatening intrusion into their lives and he cuts off the relationship, not realizing the “heavy consequences” such a move will bear. However, those consequences are not what we expect them to be at this point, where all evidence points toward a Fatal Attraction-esque narrative about a spurned would-be friend wreaking havoc on the lives of those with whom he is enamored, a plot development that is seemingly confirmed when Simon and Robyn’s beloved dog mysteriously disappears.

However, the consequences are nothing of that sort. Rather, the consequence for Simon is that he is revealed for who is truly is. At it turns out, Simon knew Gordo all too well when they were in high school because Gordo was the subject of Simon’s relentless bullying, the kind that involved not just name-calling and social isolation, but also manufactured stories that led to Simon being beaten and nearly killed by his father and being removed from school and placed in a mental institution (the nature of this past stretches credulity to some extent, but so much that it runs the film off the rails). Simon’s financial and social success—embodied in his chic house, high-end corporate job, and socially connected friends—is but a thin veneer to disguise the fact that he is a sadistic tyrant who will destroy people simply because he can. Bateman’s performance is extremely well tuned in this regard, as he slowly but surely reveals Simon’s true nature; with each crack in his visage we lose more and more sympathy for him, which shifts the film’s allegiance primarily to Robyn, who is caught unaware by her scheming, dishonest husband’s secret life, which also involves his wrecking another man’s career in order to advance his own.

Thematically, The Gift is reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), which is also about a young, emotionally fragile, but fundamentally decent young woman who discovers that she is married to a man whose egocentrism and desire for personal success drives him to commit heinous deeds. No one’s womb is promised to Satan in The Gift, but Simon is clearly willing to sacrifice almost anything to get what he wants, with little thought given to Robyn. Simon’s achievement of “the American Dream” is made horrific by his willingness to do anything to get it, which connects back to his adolescent bullying and suggests that such cruelty early in life is not a phase to grow out of, but rather an indicator of one’s true nature.

The Gift is ultimately a story about bullying and its tragic consequences, and even though there is a sense of righteous vengeance at the end when Simon’s carefully procured dream life is quickly dismantled in one 24-hour period, the film still leaves us with a sense of undue loss, with the scars of the past as painful as ever. It is not a perfect film, but it is a strangely powerful one that plays with familiar tropes to reveal darker depths than we might have expected. The Australian-born Edgerton, who has acted in more than 60 films over the past 20 years and written half a dozen screenplays, is clearly a director watch.

Copyright ©2015 James Kendrick

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