Binge-r #199: Why Women Kill + The Old Guard
New Gold Dream: Lucy Liu (Simone Grove) in Why Women Kill
WHY WOMEN KILL S1
Streaming Service: SBS on Demand
Availability: All 10 episodes now streaming
A trio of revolving time capsules stocked with luscious camp and feminist reflections, Why Women Kill is a wildly juicy satirical comic-drama that uses the same Pasadena mansion to house three very different couples whose ease together is an illusion their respective generations can’t maintain. In 1963 Beth Ann Stanton (Ginnifer Goodwin) is the dutiful homemaker wife to aerospace exec Rob (Sam Jaeger), until she learns of his infidelity; in 1984 imperious socialite Simone Grove is shocked to discover that her loving husband Karl (Jack Davenport) is secretly gay; in 2019 the open marriage of lawyer Taylor Harding (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) and screenwriter Eli Cohen (Reid Scott) is upended by the former’s bisexual girlfriend, Jade (Alexandra Daddario), moving in. You go from hat and gloves at the supermarket to a bedroom three-way quick smart.
The show’s creator is Marc Cherry, best known for Desperate Housewives. He has a feel for soap opera excess and a taste for theatrical retorts. Aside from inadvertently suggesting that the Californian house must be cursed, the three settings allow for a revolving stage of intrigue, culminating in the stoked revelation that each era will build to a murder. Cherry can write as if Joan Crawford is his eternal muse, and he refracts feminism through the lens of Hollywood’s depiction of women. For Liu’s Jade the idea agency is to be fabulous and envied, while Goodwin’s Beth Ann struggles to make her marriage work when she should be angry about her husband’s casual betrayal. “I got so lucky with you,” Eli tells Taylor, but it’s a soothing distortion that could apply to any of these eras.
The technical departments do full-bodied (expensive) work, adding a sense of exaggeration to the setting that matches the high drama of the storylines. But that also points to a concern, which is that Cherry is happier to use these women as pieces he can push around the immaculate board rather than fully fleshing them out as characters. At first that’s not an issue, because you can get a sugar high off the outrageous turns – Liu, in particular, is a hoot – and piquant replies. Is there an 18-year-old family friend who wants Jade to be his Mrs Robinson? Bet on it. Still, if the first two episodes work for you, I suspect you’ll hoover up the rest.
Slay Belles: Charlize Theron (Andy) and KiKi Layne (Nile) in The Old Guard
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
THE OLD GUARD (Netflix, 2020, 125 minutes): Action films often supply fleeting thrills, all movement and minor loss, but in this sometimes soulful graphic novel adaptation there’s an underlying sense of permanence that suggests both hopeful possibility and tragic loss. Andy (Charlize Theron, photographed with commanding gracefulness) leads a secret squad of centuries-old warriors, trying to do good even as the digital age exposes their history. When a former CIA agent (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and a rapacious corporation try to trap them, the team’s motives are tested even as they have to rescue a disbelieving new recruit, U.S. Marine Nile (KiKi Layne). Superhero movies with invulnerable protagonists exhibit minimal stakes, but here the group’s abilities reflects on mortality’s power and the consolation of companionship. Some of the dialogue illuminating these themes is boilerplate and the ending is rushed, but the direction from Gina Prince-Bythewood is exemplary, both in the connections forged between certain characters and dynamic action sequences that tie together foreground and background choreography. The film has more than you might imagine.
New on SBS on Demand: An impressionistic meltdown in two parts – first the ecstatic, then the nightmarish – Gaspar Noe’s Climax (2018, 94 minutes) is an emblematic film for the Argentinean-born arthouse filmmaker, circling a dance troupe’s final rehearsal which is followed by a wrap party with seriously spiked sangria.
New on Stan: A wrenching Swedish coming of age drama, Sami Blood (2016, 109 minutes) depicts the casual racism an Indigenous teenage girl from the country’s far north suffers when she moves south in the 1940s; Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max (2009, 89 minutes) was a landmark Australian stop-motion animated feature, binding together idiosyncrasies and pathos in the story of an unlikely friendship.
>> Missed last week’s BINGE-R? Click here to read about Netflix’s supernatural teenage drama Warrior Nun and Stan’s resonant Australian horror film Relic.
>> Want BINGE-R sent to your inbox? Click here for the weekly e-mail.
>> Check the complete BINGE-R archive: 246 series reviewed here, 147 movies reviewed here, and 34 lists compiled here.
