DVD Review: "The Fall"

This article was first published at Blogcritics

If the first series of last year’s thriller, The Fall, is anything to judge by, the staid genteel stereotype of the BBC’s dramatic programming has long gone the way of the rotary phone and the VCR. Mrs. Marple has become a modern woman unwilling to take a subordinate role to men in any area of life, and a sexually perverted serial killer is pursuing beautiful young professional women.

Written by Allan Cubitt, The Fall, stars Gillian Anderson as DSI Stella Gibson, a hard-nosed detective sent to Belfast from the central office to review a murder case the locals have been unsuccessfully working on. Not only is she a no nonsense, demanding professional, she is smart and aggressive in pushing her opinions. Moreover, she is no less aggressive in her own sexual behavior. This is a woman who takes a back seat to no one. Almost immediately she ties the one murder case, to a second unsolved case, and then when there is a third murder, it is clear that she was right.

The Fall is not a who done it. Viewers meet the killer from the very beginning. Paul Spector, played by Jamie Dornan, is the father of two young children married to a nurse who works in a neo-natal intensive care unit. He works as a grief counselor, and he likes to strangle young women, pose their naked corpses, and take photographs of the bodies. On the surface, he is a model citizen. We are shown him washing his little daughter’s hair. We are shown him packing his kids’ lunch for school. We are shown him counseling a couple who have lost their young son. Of course we are also shown him doodling a nude picture of the woman as he pretends to take notes. We are also shown him breaking into a victim’s house and stealing some of her underwear. He is a perfect candidate for a chapter in Krafft-Ebbing.

Cubitt’s script tends to alternate scenes of the police investigation and some of their outside activities with scenes of the serial killer stalking his new victim as well as his family life. Both Anderson and Dornan give masterful performances. She manages to be both dominating and alluring as she exudes sexuality. He is the model of the young family man, even as he pursues his obsessions. He is an example of what psychologists call doubling, as DSI Gibson points out. One might well argue that she, herself, is also a doubler on some level. Doubling, as explained in Psychology Today, is the creation of two independent selves within a person. Robert Louis Stevenson might have called it “Jekyll and Hydism. Different selves operate in different situations.

It is an interesting thesis and makes for a riveting five episode series, available in a two disc DVD set from Acorn in the middle of October. This first series runs for approximately 300 minutes, and seems to end with a promise of a series continuation, something  for those of us who enjoyed the show to look forward to. The DVD includes a 12 minute “Behind the Scenes” featurette with cast interviews.

DVD Review: The Crimson Petal and the White

This article was first published at Blogcritics

As the BBC four part adaptation of Michael Faber's fictional venture into late Victorian London The Crimson Petal and the White opens, we hear the voice of the heroine as bent over a desk she is writing a novel. She is partially dressed, and she is shot from behind. We assume she's a beauty, but we can see dry patches of skin and ugly blemishes. She is Sugar, a prostitute, and she is writing an erotic tale of revenge upon every man who put her there, to paraphrase a song.

It is a ferociously grim story set in London's filthy alleys filled with poverty and disease.  It is the London of Dickens' dust piles and rivers hiding swimming corpses in Our Mutual Friend. It is the London of Bleak House where the very streets bring their plague to even those who can afford to live away from them. This could have been a Dickens novel but for two things. This is a story about a prostitute, and not some cliché, trampled upon lady of the evening, but an intelligent able woman besides. Then of course there's the sex. Now if there's one thing the BBC has been adept at doing, it is turning Dickens novels into small screen successes; Faber's novel gives them a chance to do it once more, but this time with a large dose of sex and nudity. As usual they manage it with style.

The plot in some sense is a variation on the theme of the woman of ill repute with the heart of gold, she more sinned against than sinning, except not quite. Sugar (Romola Garai), a prostitute living in the brothel of her mother/madame (Gillian Anderson) is taken as a mistress by an ineffectual aspiring writer she has successfully encouraged to take a greater part in his family's business (Chris O'Dowd). He has a wife (Amanda Hall) and child, but the young wife seems to be insane, although her problems are clearly related to sexual trauma as a result of the loss of virginity and childbirth. This is melodrama of the highest order as Sugar grows more and more involved in the family, until the inevitable chickens come home to roost.

The story makes an effective feminist critique against the treatment of women in Victorian England and by extension to woman today as well. Using some of the familiar Victorian tropes, the mad woman in the attic (although in this case it's the bedroom), the eternal governess, as well as the golden hearted tramp, it depicts the plight of many women during the period. There are nods to things like abortion and the somewhat feeble reform efforts. With a title taken from a song in Tennyson's The Princess, a poem about the establishment of a woman's society in which men are not welcome, this should not be surprising.

Performances are somewhat uneven. Garai's Sugar is impressive, a strong competent woman who manages to be a sympathetic character even when she acts badly. Gillian Anderson as Mrs. Castaway seems modeled on Miss Havisham without the bridal ensemble. She makes an effective harpy. Amanda Hall is effective as the doll like wife unable to cope with the physical demands of marriage. Perhaps it has something to do with Bridesmaids, but I found it difficult to buy Chris O'Dowd as a Victorian gentleman, either as an effete aspiring writer at the beginning or as a successful businessman through most of the series. In an interview, director Marc Munden talks about how O'Dowd adds a comic element to the character which presumably was why he was cast. The problem is that it doesn't really work.

The two disc DVD set now available from Acorn Media includes biographies of the characters on the first disc, and interviews and deleted scenes on the second.