Ellie C – Google

Someone ball my eyes out. Lacks any complexity that does any justice for a Parisans and Parisan culture. A teenage girl googled “French faux pas” and took the top ten results and made this. The result is annoyingly cliche. An ignorant american girl fails to learn any French before moving to Paris and somehow the French are incredibly accomodating by conversing with her in English because “she’s pretty” troupe. It tries so hard to be Devil Wears Prada and fails to capture the essence of French work ethic and pride.

What’s with the accents? I don’t know why I enjoyed Bly Manor over Hill House. Maybe it was the story. Maybe I felt Danielle was more palatable on screen than Eleanor Craine. Maybe it was added Brits or the reduced American presence or overall, maybe it’s the smaller cast onscreen. I can forgive OJC for not nailing the difficult Scot accent but Siegel didn’t even try with the Brit accent and we’re fortunate enough she had less lines the more Viola was onscreen.

If you suppress all those burning questions that any rational human being would ask, then it’s a pretty darn good show. The entire season relies on a couple who are incapable of communicating with each other with each episode developing so that a husband of over 16 years of marriage, is suddenly questioning his marriage but fails to report his wife missing when any normal spouse would. The Stranger is a professional blackmailer with Daddy and Mommy issues - no wonder she isn’t likeable (nor is her partner in crime). By the end of the season, none of the “secrets” revealed by the Stranger are anything worth dying over so she and her friend are just bloody annoying. I rolled my eyes so hard at the whole “...you’re my brother” part *gagging sounds*. The parts that weren’t so headache inducing - watching the teenagers lose their s*** because they think they almost killed their classmate. Ok, Katz I kinda understand. Dude isn’t making much and his estranged(?) wife is poisoning their kid. He’s kinda desperate so he finds other jobs to make extra money. Simple. He’s pushed to his limits which might explain his rash and violent decisions. Now poor Olivia is (I’m assuming left with her killer mother). Summary; cops are hopeless. Lawyers throw all rules out when their spouses hide secrets and eventually go missing. But we can always count on teenagers to find PCP and silent discos haven’t died out.

I wanted to like this film more than I did. This story has been done - it’s just a hillbilly version of the kid from nowhere making it and the American Dream blah blah blah. To make it worse, Basso (JD) falls short against a superstar cast. Makeup and costume were excellent. I mean, the transformation of Glen Close and Amy Adams was remarkable. The film felt hollow. Nice and shiny to look at, but lacked depth and filling. Replace Close and Adams with B star actors and you’ve got yourself a Hallmark movie.