Binge-r #205: Trigonometry + Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Brush Off: Thalissa Teixeira (Gemma) Ariane Labed (Ray) and Gary Carr (Kieran) in Trigonometry
TRIGONOMETRY S1
Streaming Service: SBS on Demand
Availability: All eight episodes now streaming
As the streaming services enter an arms race for superiority with one new show after another, it’s the offbeat and unexpected smaller series that are currently catching my eye. The striking new lens of P-Valley and the detonated colonial melodrama of Little Birds [full review here] on Stan have both been recent highlights, and now there’s SBS on Demand’s subtly observed British drama about a London trio’s polyamorous relationship. Created by playwrights Effie Woods and Duncan Macmillan, Trigonometry is ultimately about the intimate ties that without explanation, or sometimes even understanding, can bind people together. The link can be expressed as sexual desire, financial aid, or emotional support – the show is frank about all three – and it makes the triangular relationship at the show’s centre deeply durable.
Stuck on conflicting schedules – she’s trying to launch a café by day, he’s a paramedic on night shift – Gemma (Thalissa Teixeira) and Kieran (Gary Carr) are in love and barely keeping their head above water in London; money is tight and the broadband at their upstairs flat isn’t delivering the porn she wants to masturbate to. A tenant for the tiny spare room brings Ray (Ariane Labed), a newly retired athlete leaving home at age 30 and unsure of what happens next. In the initial episodes the terrific Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari (whose feature Chevalier is currently on Stan) impeccably captures the changing currents and charged physical proximity when the tiny apartment adds a third inhabitant. The lingering gazes that follow steadily give way to the realisation of something more.
It’s easy for a series about a thrupple to traffic in the sensational, but as expertly played by the three leads, who always suggest internal doubts and flickers of recrimination without the need for exposition, the dynamic that unfolds is given time to form and evolve. The events of the season span more than a year, allowing each of the central players to change in ways more granular than flicking a yes/no switch. Trigonometry is quietly ambitious, looking to shared rhythms but never shying away from the difficulties that Ray, Gemma, and Kieran have to grapple with. You have to settle in with it, but this is a strong character study.
A Love Supreme: Adele Haenel (Heloise) and Noemie Merlant (Marianne) in Portrait of a Lady on Fire
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (Stan, 2019, 122 minutes): To be clear, Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire was the best film released in 2019. A period drama about the briefest of love affairs between two women, it uses the era’s numerous constraints to create a romance for the ages. Summoned to a remote French island to surreptitiously paint a portrait for a waiting suitor, artist Marianne (Noemie Merlant) finds herself drawn to her subject, Heloise (Adele Haenel). Formal restraint, by the characters and filmmaker alike, is overlaid with fierce desire, so that the risk facing the two women amplifies both the depths of their passion and the knowledge that what they have can never endure. Loss is coded into the narrative, making the rigorous examination of gaze, anthropological detail, and exultant pleasure all the more resonant. “Do all lovers feel as if they’re inventing something,” Heloise asks, and the film turns those words into an act of invocation.
New on Netflix: A cavalcade of comic gambits (Monty Python, Armando Iannucci), Vice (2018, 132 minutes) is director Adam McKay’s expose of Dick Cheney (Christian Bale), the U.S. Vice-President to George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell) who assiduously seized power and abused it; The Guilt Trip (2012, 96 minutes) puts Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen together as road trip mother and son, doing just enough with the concept to be amenable.
New on SBS on Demand: Forget the cop movie clichés, Police Story (1985, 87 minutes) is a physically memorable Hong Kong action film that showcases director and star Jackie Chan at his life-risking peak, with a young Maggie Cheung in a supporting role; from the same decade comes Ridley Scott’s moody Black Rain (1989, 121 minutes), where Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia play American police detectives who pursue their quarry to Japan.
>> Missed last week’s BINGE-R? Click here to read about Netflix’s subversively funny new series Teenage Bounty Hunters and Stan’s remarkable Australian movie Acute Misfortune.
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