Gravity and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, it’s obviously Alfonso Cuarón. Back on the small screen, the director unveils Disclaimer, an addictive series with Cate Blanchett (Oscar for Best Actress 2014) available on Apple TV starting October 11. Cate is the protagonist of the distressing story of an award-winning and famous journalist who receives an anonymous novel, without message or stamp. Yes, but here it is: the protagonist of the novel is none other than herself… and this Madame Perfect actually hides a huge secret.
Death and deception
In a gloomy and gray England, an old man, Stephen (Kevin Kline), has just lost his wife. He discovers among the belongings of their teenage son, who died years earlier, an envelope of photos jealously hidden by his deceased wife. In these snapshots: a woman older than him, posing nude in a hotel room… as well as the script of a film that seems to narrate the days leading up to the death of his son. Stephen then has only one goal: to see the last person to have associated with him, whom he deems responsible, sink.
In the same timeframe, Catherine Ravenscroft, a journalist known for denouncing criminals, receives at home an anonymous manuscript telling in a completely disconcerting way her own youth, revealing in the process her grave secret. Would the old man from the beginning have suspicions about her?
Disturbing emotions
Cate Blanchett is extraordinary in this role of a woman as famous as she is detestable, an absent mother with dark secrets. We first feel pity for her, poor woman horrified to see her secret made public, while her profession positions her as a woman committed against crime, to the point that one sincerely wonders how she could be involved in the death of a young man. Then quickly, Catherine becomes an unbearable and deceptive woman, who tries to justify her lies, denies the accusations, and abuses her colleagues. A true queen of victimization? Her husband, Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen), whom his wife has lied to for about twenty years, is frankly pitiable.
This tension-filled series is based on the novel Revealed by Renée Knight published in 2015. The story adapted for the screen by Cuarón evokes very disturbing emotions throughout the gradual unraveling of the story. The timeline (between present and past) and each new detail amplify the confusion in which the viewer is plunged. Cate Blanchett commented on it herself: "There are many unflattering human behaviors depicted in the series," to the point that the moral of the story leaves a rather bitter taste…
Disclaimer, on Apple TV + October 11.
