Disclaimer is a series entirely directed by Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, to whom we owe in particular Romaa film already released directly on Netflix, and which in 2018 undoubtedly inaugurated the era of these sophisticated auteur productions, supposedly a little monstrous, and which for this reason – their exploded format -, find their place on the platforms rather than on the big screen. It is also a bit of the story of Disclaimerin Alfonso Cuarón’s little papers for years: the adaptation of a novel which he first imagined making into a film. Too imposing, it ultimately became a series of seven episodes which were released these weeks on Apple. I begin with these technical considerations because it seems to me that they inform on the quality of this object, very sophisticated, very visually coherent – there is an author behind it, without question, but it turns out that the role and the power of the author are precisely at the heart of Disclaimerthis word which corresponds in French to this warning which sometimes exists on the threshold of fictions: “any resemblance to existing people”, etc.
The series interweaves three stories, the connection between which is not immediately apparent. First there is Catherine, who designs successful documentaries, lives in a bourgeois house in London with a business manager husband who serves her fine wines in the evening to relax her, and their 25-year-old son – an erratic career. , teenage look – who has finally left the family nest. One day, she receives at home a book entitled The perfect strangerthe reading of which completely upsets her – it seems to conceal something secret which concerns her intimately. This book was found and then published by another character: Steven is a professor exhausted by the existence and death of his son and then his wife years earlier. One day while he is sorting through his belongings, he discovers a manuscript signed by the deceased: it is for him the start of a mission, and he transforms into an implacable and vengeful creature. The third story is the summer story of a young English man: he is on vacation with his girlfriend in Italy, where they make love, laugh while making too much noise, mistreat the locals, until a phone call calls the young girl back to London.
Cordeau
Difficult to say more, because the interest of Disclaimer is based on the editing of these stories, and the cleverly organized unveiling of the nature of the relationships that bind these characters together. It’s well done, it’s even more than that: it’s tasty in suspense, in twists and turns, in mystery, on very sulfurous material, with family secrets, sex, and characters outraged in their jobs – Cate Blanchett as a middle-class woman full of strength and excitement at the same time, Kevin Kline who plays Steven the old teacher, terrifying as a falsely harmless false old man. Ultimately, it looks like a good station novel, or a slightly bad TV soap opera, and this function, obvious to the viewer, it seems to me, comes into conflict with the aforementioned hyper-polished character.
Here is a series whose primary interest is of a purely narrative type, but which prides itself on a narratological and philosophical purpose, let’s tell the truth, what we do with it when it becomes a story, the impossibility perhaps of finding it when it takes shape in speech. This “meta” dimension finds its formal counterpart in a straight-line staging, each super thoughtful shot, each detail of the setting thought to be a potential clue: in fact, it is a bizarre object for the spectator who is constantly caught both for a blind consumer of a good first-degree soap opera, and for a discerning person who reflects on his practice of fiction. This is undoubtedly both the limit and the interest of this bizarre object that is Disclaimerwhich leaves, at the end, an impression of both satisfaction and annoyance.
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