Entertainment
"Little Fires Everywhere" review: fierce and fantastic
Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington are on fire.
Not literally, of course. To our knowledge, the the actresses do not send clouds of smoke. But both used their considerable talents to ignite the fascinating new Hulu mini-series "Little Fires Everywhere".
"Fires" (adapted from the best-seller of Celeste Ng in 2017) and its two producers / stars do not only meet but easily exceed impressive expectations. "Fires" (aired March 18 on four) is the successful encounter of style and substance, combining a great acting, superb costumes and production design with sharp scripts that extend the source material acclaimed. Set in the 1990s, each frame, each line, each pair of high-waisted jeans with a sense and drama ranging from hyper-serious to soapy, with delicious balance.
"Fires" is what happens when the delicate balance in the perfect postcard suburb of Shaker Heights, Ohio, is upset by the shock of two families. At the start of the series in 1998, we see Elena Richardson , white, rich and blonde. (Witherspoon), her husband, Bill (Joshua Jackson), and three of their four teenage children watching their aptly named McMansion burst into flame against the morning sky. The family doesn't know what happened, but the fire department knows one thing: someone has lit small fires all over the house. The Richardsons and the cops suspect the family's rebellious teenager, Izzy (Megan Stott).
The series goes back a year to the arrival of Shaker, artist and single mother Mia Warren (Washington) and daughter Pearl (Lexi Underwood). Out of guilt and embarrassment, Elena rents half of the family's rental property to Miaand sends her younger son Moody (Gavin Lewis) to become Pearl's friend.
The teenager quickly takes Moody's and Richardson's older children, Jock Trip (Jordan Elsass) and Homecoming Queen Lexie (Jade Pettyjohn). Pearl idolizes Lexie and crushes on Trip (despite Moody's obvious feelings for her). Mia, who only knew Elena's condescension and racism, takes on a job as Richardson's housekeeper to keep an eye on Pearl, who is increasingly evident in wealthy and materialistic life of the family.
Elena and Mia start to confront each other over their parenting styles, Mia encourages Izzy's artsygrunge rebellion, while Elena tries to scold her daughter by wearing pearls for a guard fight between a Chinese immigrant mother and the white couple trying to adopt her baby. Mia's secret past and Elena's obsessive need for answers (she is a part-time journalist with an unfinished ambition) aggravate their conflict far beyond arguments and harsh words.
At first glance, it feels like Witherspoon molded herself into the role of Elena as a wealthy and arrogant suburban mother, like the one she starred in "Big Little Lies "by HBO. But the deeper into "Fires" you get, the less similarities exist between Elena and Madeline Martha Mackenzie. In "Lies", she was brash and laid back; Elena is tense and so formal that the lack of matching tartan sneakers in a family Christmas photo is enough to inspire a deep fusion. By inviting a comparison of the two, Witherspoon forces the viewer to confront stereotypes about mothers and the roles that actresses of a certain age can play.
Washington excels here too, and her intense performance is constantly on the verge of becoming furious.Mia harnesses Washington's natural forces as an actor, her best work operating to the extreme. With equal fervor, Washington strikes the emotional high notes of Mia's anger and the stoic low notes in the reserved character she presents to the world.
While the intertwined intrigues of "Fires" unfold slowly over eight episodes (seven have been made available for review), the complexity of the story becomes deeply addictive. "Fires" is the rare multigenerational story in which the drama for teens is as compelling as what happens with adults. Even if the fate of a baby separated from its mother is debated and marriages are tested, the authors of "Fires" create authentic story arcs for Richardson's four children with high stakes, from same way that every hiccup (romantic or otherwise) looks like life and death when you're overwhelmed with hormones and emotions in teens.
The series offers an anuanced look at race relations through Lexie and her boyfriend Brian (Stevonte Hart), a black teenager who becomes more and more angry at Lexie's constant Maisubteracism. She does not "see" the color but he looks at his black classmates, his driving workers and even him.
"Fires" puts a microscope on the American dream of a car in each aisle and a chicken in each pot. Shaker seems to be the perfect American suburb, perfect in every respect, until cracks begin to appear in the veneer of carefully mowed lawns and fairytale dances.
Characters may live in a Clinton-era fantasy of post-racial America, but the tenor of scenes on race, in addition to class, motherhood and sexuality, feels painfully relevant today. In an argument, Mia underlines the difference between the two women: "You didn't make good choices, you had good choices. "In a less successful series, the moment would be explicit, moralizing. In" Fires ", he scares the public of his truth.
"Fires" lends itself so well to a compulsive vision that Hulu's decision to publish episodes every week, rather than all at once, seems to be a mistake. But there is validity to the idea that it could be best seen with breaks. The power of his calm suburban scenes, whether in a dance school, a book club, or in a courtroom, can be as overwhelming as an epic battle or tense drug dealing in a more "serious" show.
"Fires" doesn't need a lot of extra cutting to make the hearts of its viewers beat. The series has the rare ability to make the banal simply fascinating.
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