HBO miniseries Big Little Lies is a guilty pleasure you should soak in
The lies we tell ourselves are often more dangerous than those we tell others. In Big Little Lies, adapted from Liane Moriarty’s novel, a group of affluent Monterey women deal with the deceptions they visit upon themselves.
It allows Madeline the luxury of staring out at the sea from her beach house while trying to develop the social conscience of the six-year-olds who study with her daughter. It allows Jane to survive a terrible tragedy in her past and try and make a new life with her son Ziggy. It enables Celeste to forget she was ever a high powered lawyer who gave up her career to be a stay-at-home to adorable twin boys, and a hot, younger, banker husband.
The beauty of the miniseries is the lie that we so obviously see is just the tip. There are even darker secrets these women are keeping from each other as they go through their seemingly perfect, sun dappled days, fixing play dates and organising trivia nights.
They are privileged women who seem to have somewhat difficult relationships with other equally privileged women — Renata, the successful CFO who is the archetypal hyperventilating, helicopter mother, and Bonnie, the laidback, yoga teacher cum earth mother cum green goddess married to Madeline’s former husband.
Confused much?
Don’t be. Instead, do yourself a favour, Binge watch all seven episodes in one go in what is one of the most compelling new shows on TV right now. Within its Desperate Housewives trashy vibe, acted by a group of amazing A-list actresses (Reese Witherspoon is Madeline, Nicole Kidman is a fantastic Celeste, Shailene Woodley is Jane, Laura Dern is Renata and Zoe Kravtiz is Bonnie), it hides a sharp brain and a pulsating heart.
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| Nicole Kidman is a fantastic Celeste. |
It’s a heart that is all too human, that cheats on husbands, that lives through the children, that fights a losing battle with memory, that bottles up its pain, and often just tolerates the worst abuse possible to keep intact the facade of the perfect marriage, the gorgeous home and the beautiful children.
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club, Wild), Big Little Lies unveils itself slowly, haltingly, almost reluctant to let us in on the ugliness that lies within the mask of perfect teeth, sun kissed hair, gleaming SUVs, platefuls of organic food, and all the latest fads — standing desks for husbands who work out of home, check. Superbikes to keep fit, check. Perfect costumes for yoga days, check. Windswept coffee terrace where the gals meet for a gossip, check. Competitive parties (Frozen theme park vs party at home), check.
Moriarty, an Australian author who specialises in suburban society thrillers, wrote the book in a series of teases, and the miniseries follows that format, transplanted to America. It could just as easily be based in India, suburban Delhi or Mumbai, with a group of overachieving parents and their precocious kids, bitchy WhatsApp groups, posh parties, complicated play dates and Chardonnay catch-ups.
Since it is a fact now established that all rich people all over the world behave in pretty much the same way, you could have the same situations: infidelities, domestic violence, troubled children channeling parental violence in school, ineffective teachers, and lots of sweaty sex (here indulged in chiefly by Kidman and her onscreen husband, Alexander Skaarsgard, who you will find to be a menacing Jekyll and Hyde character).
There’s a powerful new ad against domestic violence which focuses on a woman’s hair, released by Jui recently.
It’s nothing compared to what goes on with Kidman’s hair as she gets thrown about on bathroom walls, carpeted floors and party terraces. She won’t leave her abusive husband because at the end of the day he’s a good dad. He would never hurt the children, she tells her therapist. But what if the children learn to hurt too?
That and other such questions, beautifully tied together by one gigantic bow, and really truly, madly, deeply, this is one guilty pleasure you should just soak in.