Venice Dispatch – Disclaimer

I’ve never found time for TV at film festivals because priorities. Having said that, when Alfonso Cuarón creates a show headlined by Cate Blanchett, you make time. In fact, I was so curious about what Señor Cuarón chose as his follow-up to Roma that, shortly after the project was announced a couple of years ago, I picked up Renée Knight’s novel on which it is based. Disclaimer was a fun read. Carried by a simple, irresistible hook, it makes no pretense of high literary aspirations but takes you on a down-and-dirty, breathlessly tense ride of secrets and lies. Now faithfully adapted for the screen, the 7-part limited series proved an equally engrossing experience even as it inherits some of the book’s weaknesses.

Blanchett plays Catherine, a celebrated documentarian/journalist married to fund manager Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen). The strained relationship with her son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee) aside, Catherine seems to lead a charmed life. Then one day she receives an anonymous package containing a novel by an unknown author. It’s a thriller about an erotic-turned-fatal encounter that happened at a seaside resort. Even though there’s nothing extraordinary about the writing, the book shakes Catherine to the core as she realizes she is unmistakably its protagonist.

Who wrote this? How could they have known? What are their intentions? While Catherine scrambles to find answers and save everything she holds dear, we meet Stephen (Kevin Kline), a retired schoolteacher who’s just coming out of a funk nine years after the death of his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville). Bitter and alone, Stephen doesn’t see the point of getting up every morning anymore, until he discovers things in Nancy’s possession that suddenly give his life purpose again. As the missing link that would ultimately connect the worlds of Catherine and Stephen, we see a young man named Jonathan (Louis Partridge) traveling through Italy with his girlfriend, blissfully unaware of what’s to come.

It’s hard to talk about this show without getting into spoilers, but in this case I actually don’t think it’s that bad to know what’s going on. You get a pretty good idea from the first couple of episodes anyway. The kick is more in seeing how the multiple narrative strands gradually come together to reveal the inevitable. Of these, Catherine’s story is most like a classic mystery. Haunted by something she thought was buried in the past, she must fight an invisible threat that somehow knows all her darkest secrets. Blanchett is, unsurprisingly, very good in the part of a woman who’s not what she appears to be. From the way Catherine’s perfect poise cracks after reading the book, to the way her whole persona comes undone as gossip spreads, she hit the big emotional cues effortlessly. Fans of Tár and Notes on a Scandal would be glad to hear that in the fear, indignation and shame that flash through Catherine’s ever-more-transparent face, there are shades of Lydia Tár and Sheba Hart among other complex female characters the double Oscar winner has so memorably portrayed.

The scene in which Blanchett struck me the most, however, is probably the quietest one. It’s night. Catherine lies next to her sleeping mother and finally recounts what happened all those years ago. As the audience we don’t hear what she says, but there’s such pain, resignation and undisguised relief in her expression you feel like you’re seeing someone at their most utterly exposed. A sight of great poignancy.

Stephen’s storyline, meanwhile, plays out like a revenge thriller. Driven by rage and a twisted sense of justice, the old man goes about his deadly mission with childlike relish. Kline delivers an expertly calibrated sympathetic-turned-disturbing performance that gets under your skin. In the flashback scenes with his wife, Stephen is very much the passive bystander, helplessly looking on as she wastes away. The change his character goes through following the accidental discovery is beautifully conveyed, reminding you there’s no expiration date on that most primal human instinct for retribution.

Then there’s Jonathan’s story, which might be the liveliest and Cuarón-est of all. When one thinks of the five-time Oscar winner, Roma and Gravity may come to mind first. But the Mexican auteur is notably also responsible for Y tu mamá también, one of the hottest movies of the 21st century. And it is electrifying to see that level of horniness again in a major Hollywood production. Disclaimer opens with a sex scene as two teenagers with too much libido and next to no skill go at it on a train. The no-sex-in-film moral police would tell you this is gratuitous, that it doesn’t move the plot forward. But once again, how wrong would they be. Like many of life’s comedies and tragedies, sex is the catalyst at the heart of Disclaimer. It’s a story about the force of desire, and Cuarón thankfully doesn’t shy away from any of it. Episode three, which comes with an explicit contents warning, includes an extended and pretty graphic scene in a hotel room. It’s one of the show’s pivotal moments that not only informs you so much about the characters (especially by contrast to the opening scene), but sets the stage for all the drama that follows.

Partridge and his scene partner Leila George are both excellent. Each of them captures the state of mind of their respective characters with great precision, a feat all the more impressive when we later revisit the scene from a different perspective.

On a technical level, Disclaimer looks and sounds fantastic. A particular standout is the cinematography by co-DP’s three-time Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki and six-time Oscar nominee Bruno Delbonnel. Whether it’s the brilliantly misty windows of London or the lusty, sun-kissed coast of Italy, you’re never looking at something that’s not pristinely crafted and richly suggestive. There are images so starkly lit and boldly angled (the shot of Catherine caught by the garden flushlight with a knife in hand, for example) they shock and mesmerize at the same time.

As with the book, Disclaimer suffers from a bit of a dip once the viewer has figured out (or at least thinks they have figured out) what’s happening, but regains its momentum towards the end. The dense narration, while likely lifted directly from the source material, can feel a bit exhausting at times. All in all, the gorgeous-looking, sexually-charged show tells a gripping tale about truth and narratives. It’s not exactly high art, but dares to go to some real, uncomfortable places and should appeal to audiences far beyond the mainstream.