BANAL HISTORY The miniseries Deception, in principle, is banal through and considers such a common phenomenon in the West as revenge. I admit that in other parts of the world this phenomenon takes place, but it is Western filmmakers who love to “explore” it – who are detailed and thorough, who are walking and fussy, like the authors of this film product.
At the center of the story is a confrontation between two women. One of them, of course, is young (even too much) and beautiful (not so much). The second is aging and in a state of permanent crisis of family relations. You can understand the lady, the husband is at first simply indifferent and cynical to her problems, in the course of the action becomes a real jerk who is unable to understand what becomes a kind of bargaining chip in the increasingly aggravated “dispute” of two female individuals. And then the hero is overtaken by the detective component of the plot, the fault of which is another no less stupid hero who has a direct relationship to the older woman. The tension of the thriller sometimes appears, but the painful naivety of his characters extinguishes at the root.
The reason for revenge is at least unjustified. Although the characters constantly hint at the natural demonism of the avenger, but the authors do not support these suspicions, so the narrative itself looks confused and “poorly mounted”.
Under the curtain, as expected, the heroines came to some consensus, but something suggests that the avenger will soon break his promise. Moreover, the authors seem to hint at a second season. I hope it was a joke, because it is unlikely that the first season will earn the right to continue.
In the course of the action, the inevitable question arose - why? Why make a series that doesn’t have a single script or filming find? In which the characters are so dull and stupid, and men are also cowardly, that it is simply not interesting to look at them. You do not sympathize with them, but only get annoyed at every action, anticipating the twists of the plot and even its finale in advance.
The actors are not expressive at all and seem to be in a somnambulistic dream, depicting not just the naivety of their heroes, but some painful state of infantilism. Which cannot but cause irritability.
Louise Hooper is almost unknown to me, although she became one of the co-directors of the series The Witcher. Therefore, it is difficult to get an idea of her directorial abilities. I suspect that in Deception, she decided to explore the “femininity” of female nature in certain extreme situations, and the behavior of the male part of the story from the standpoint of feminism. But the result was a complete absurdity, which is banal, like five kopecks, and is absolutely not worth either the author’s or the audience’s efforts.
2 out of 10