The Undoing
I very much enjoyed this psychological thriller on SKY ATLANTIC.
It’s set in New York and stars Hugh Grant as Jonathan Fraser, a paediatric encologist, and Nicole Kidman, his wife Grace a psychiatrist, specialising in marital breakdown.
Both actors starred as villains in the excellent Paddington film series.
You pretty much know that neither will deliver a duff performance nor accept a script that is mediocre.
This is in fact an adaptation of the novel You Should Have Known. The Frasers are glamourous socialites and Grace is on her son’s school committee raising money for the school by auction.
At a meeting turns up Elves (Matilda de Angelis) who comes from Spanish Harlem and whose son attends the school through the diversity programme for which the auction is raising funds.
She does not fit in the rich milieu and, when she breastfeeds her child at the conference table, the others except Grace are aghast.
The drama highlights the hypocrisy of the froideur of these people and the charitable work they undertake.
Then Elves is murdered and Jonathan’s excuse that he was at an encology conference in Cleveland seems suspect.
New York has featured in some superb movies. This began as slow burner but, as I was born in the city, I very much appreciated the contemporary Manhattan setting that was brilliantly depicted.
Nicoel Kidman delivers a very good performance but is a bit of a know all/goody two shoes.
The marriage seems too good to be true.
Hugh Grant maintains the high level of his late middle age performances.
He was superb in A Very English Plot and Paddington and does dark side well.
I did not bother with the second episode of Roadkill, mostly panned by the critics as too doctrinaire by David Hare but The Undoing, except for Grace being very much the modern Superwoman now featured in every American film, does not come with a prescribed agenda and will keep me and maybe you watching.
