a stunning end to the series… or annoying?

Available on Apple TV +, the latest episode of Alfonso Cuarón's thriller directed by Cate Blanchett turns everything on its head… and divides the journalists at “Télérama”. Warning, spoilers.

CSome films, some series only take on their full meaning in their final moments. This is the case of Disclaimer, miniseries by Alfonso Cuarón, adapted from the novel Revealed, by Renee Knight (ed. Fleuve, 2015). After six episodes of tortuous suspense, told in voice-over, this intimate thriller closes with a reversal of point of view: its heroine Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett) finally speaks. And we understand that everything we have learned so far about her past, the image given to us of a powerful but selfish woman, is not reality… Great or disappointing? Our journalists are divided.

POUR

What interests Alfonso Cuarón here is the gaze of the spectator. For six episodes, he plays with our perception. Alternately fascinated by sublime images, distraught by excessive aesthetic choices and destabilized by changes in the tone of the story, we forget to consider the essential: what story are we being told and who is telling it to us? We are not sufficiently wary of the changing voice-overs, which judge Catherine harshly – after all, she is played by a Cate Blanchett still draped in the coldness of her character from Warehouse. We feel a sense of discomfort in the face of this strange story, but it is only as we approach its conclusion that the truth appears to us: the victim was Catherine. She didn't let her young lover die, she was raped by a stranger. In the light of this revelation, we think again of the images that are so powerful, of what we have not seen or heard. Disclaimer stands out as a sort of Sixth sense post-#MeToo, an experience that shakes and pushes each viewer to question their gaze. — P.L.

AGAINST

Now that Disclaimer is over, we can say it: put back in order, the story that was inflicted on us for seven hours has no meaning, neither factual nor psychological. Even admitting that maternal love defies the impossible, how was Nancy, the author of the defamatory novel, able to reconstruct with such precision – point of view except – events that she did not witness? And even knowing that a number of nice husbands behave very disappointingly in times of turbulence, how can Robert fall so instantly and miserably into the trap? The answer is that these characters are not, moved like pawns in a pompous demonstration, disguised as a human comedy with a lot of voice-overs, tracking shots and fades to black. We admire Cuarón, but here, his mastery becomes the mask for overproduced television, which confuses prestige and quality, and surfs lazily on the era. The final twist does not shed light on anything: even rewinding, this gloubi-boulga which kneads the criticism of the cancel culture and the denunciation of the discredit and silencing of women remains totally incoherent. — C.V.