Disclaimer Review: Apple’s new erotic thriller has a subversive bite

Exemption from liability it feels like a direct response to the way studios have balked at producing bona fide erotic thrillers aimed squarely at adults. While the Apple TV Plus series is a cinematic delight and its lead performances are tremendous, its raw sexuality is what makes writer/director Alfonso Cuarón seem (gravity, children of men) is trying to get you into a very specific kind of headspace. But what’s so bright about it Exemption from liability it’s the way she uses her sensuality to complicate reading her wild puzzle-box mystery.

Based on the 2015 novel by Renée KnightExemption from liability tells the story of Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett), a respected journalist whose life begins to unravel after receiving a copy of a strange manuscript titled “The Perfect Stranger.” After years of Catherine exposing the dark secrets of powerful people with her documentaries, there are plenty of people who might want her revenge. But as Catherine makes her way through “The Perfect Stranger,” it becomes abundantly clear that the person behind it, retired professor Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline), somehow knows things about her that no one else does. could never have knowledge.

It’s not just that “The Perfect Stranger” enters Catherine’s personal life; recounts with stunning clarity a particular summer 20 years in the past when she (portrayed in flashback by Leila George) first met Stephen’s 19-year-old son Jonathan (Louis Partridge) while on holiday with his own little son. Although Catherine has kept her affair with Jonathan a secret from her husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen), the manuscript describes each of the lovers’ encounters in vivid detail. And since Jonathan died under mysterious circumstances that same summer, Stephen’s claim that he blames Catherine for the death and plans to publish the book leaves him cold-blooded.

As Catherine’s fear shifts her into investigative reporter mode and she sets out to stop Stephen, Exemption from liability leans more into its premise by telling its story from a perspective that gives you a sense of how “The Perfect Stranger” affects the people who get pieces of it. Seeing so many of her darkest secrets told in plain text sends Catherine into an internal panic that is decidedly at odds with the facade of normalcy she puts on Robert and his emotionally distant son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee). And after noticing a change in his wife, Robert can’t help but feel fear and confusion when he starts receiving risqué photos of her from Stephen in the mail.

Seen through a lens, Exemption from liability it reads like a psychological drama about an elderly stalker who terrorizes a woman as a way to cope with the pain of losing his family. This is the story Exemption from liability presents as he approaches Stephen’s life in the present where he remembers his son and late wife Nancy (Lesley Manville). But Cuarón paints an increasingly complicated picture of what’s really going on with each of the show’s beatific flashbacks to the sunny summer Catherine has been trying to put behind her.

Exemption from liability lets you differentiate between fact and fiction as it jumps between timelines to carefully illustrate how people’s perception of reality is shaped by the stories they tell themselves. There’s never any doubt that Catherine is hiding secrets that Robert wants to hurt her with, but Cuarón invites you to consider how a book like “The Perfect Stranger”—so full of well-guarded information—could have been written by someone that was t there when it all went down. It’s an obvious question that seems like the kind of thing someone might immediately come up with in the face of a shocking revelation that their lives have been turned upside down. But Cuarón dramatizes the book’s outrageous contents in a way that, when combined with the show’s absolutely gorgeous photography by Emmanuel Lubezki and Bruno Delbonnel, emphasizes that stories of power must influence the way we understand the others

Kline and Manville shine with tragically heartbreaking performances that sell the hopelessness that Jonathan’s death brought to the lives of the Brigstocks. But Exemption from liability really revolves around Blanchett and George, whose two iterations of Catherine feel subtly different at first glance, but surprisingly similar as the series’ seven episodes unfold. You have to wonder how much of the gap between the steel of current Catherine and the ethereal air of her past self is just a function of time changing people, or if that difference speaks to something more sinister that she’s trying to desperately hide

The breadth with which sex is outlined Exemption from liabilityThe story makes the show feel different from other recent Apple TV Plus offerings. But instead of existing just to turn you on, Cuarón uses the show’s erotic edge to point out the danger of dwelling on the intimate details of other people’s lives. You’re supposed to gawk at Jonathan and Cather’s past loves in the same way that everyone who comes into possession of “The Perfect Stranger” is gawk at the contents of the book.

Conclusions should be taken out of the way Exemption from liability it shows you who Catherine and Jonathan were because Cuarón is trying to get you, like his characters, to build a story about them in your mind. But in the final episode of the series, Exemption from liability‘s drama metamorphoses in a way that is designed to leave you reeling and thinking about how malleable the truth really can be.

Exemption from liability also stars HoYeon Jung, Liv Hill, Gemma Jones, Anya Marco Harris, Archie George and Youssef Kerkour. The first two episodes of the show hit Apple TV Plus on October 11.