2024 Show
Alma Har'el · United States of America · English
Natalie Portman makes her TV debut in this intriuging, but uneven, noir thriller
With such a long career in film, it’s surprising that Natalie Portman has never starred in a television show, except, of course, the occasional voice over and guest appearances. The story that got her to television is Lady in the Lake, the 2019 bestselling crime noir thriller that weaves classic 60s noir with intersectional feminism all through a whodunit plot. Of course, it’s no surprise that Portman performs well, and her and co-star Moses Ingram are excellent as mothers seeking change in their respective lives. The comparison between their lives drives home the tragedy of how unfair the odds were stacked against Ingram’s Cleo Johnson. However, the way director Alma Har’el alternates between lives is clunky and sometimes even confusing, even if it’s in hopes to bring the original novel’s POV shifts onto the screen. The source material is ambitious, daring, and a worthy vehicle for both Portman and Ingram, so it’s disappointing to see Lady in the Lake already sputtering at the start.
When the disappearance of a young girl grips the city of Baltimore on Thanksgiving 1966, the lives of two women, Maddie Schwartz and Cleo Sherwood, converge on a fatal collision course.
"Like many vibe-heavy endeavors, if you aren’t attuned to its rhythms, it’s easy to drift off entirely. But the series is just as easy to admire for how thoroughly it subverts expectations, as well as its exhaustive love for its leads."
— Ben Travers
"The darkness Har’el leans into gives this series some cutting edge that the genre desperately needs, and it allows the story to bloom into something wholly original."
— Kaiya Shunyata
Baltimore, 1960s. While the disappearance of young Tessie Durst grips the city, Jewish housewife Maddie Schwartz leaves her husband to become an investigative journalist. She discovers another disappearance, that of Black activist Cleo Johnson, that isn’t widely reported in the newspapers.
Adapting a multi-POV plot can be difficult– the internal insights a character has in the book isn't easy to translate directly on screen. It's because of this hurdle the first two episodes are focused on establishing the two women’s respective lives, but in doing so, the immediate events of the book are delayed, giving a slow start to the series.
Can we just slow things down before shifting to the other plot line, please?
Isabella Endrinal is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. She's now free from the corporate night shift. Previous articles have been published in outlets such as NANG Magazine. She's currently catching up on some classic films… if she isn't coping with the fact that the Haikyu anime will end soon.
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