Vladimir: Rachel Weisz Unleashed in a Series on Neuroses and Desire
A college professor in a midlife crisis becomes fascinated by a younger new colleague, in an eight-episode adaptation of the novel of the same name. On Netflix.
The unnamed protagonist, simply called M, is an English professor just over fifty, with chronic writer's block and growing insecurity due to the proverbial midlife crisis. Having spent decades without producing a follow-up to her debut book, she has settled for making a living by teaching at college.
Mother of a bisexual daughter, she is married to John, a colleague a few years older with whom she has an open relationship. In the past, the man has had several relationships with some of his students, and now the case risks overwhelming him, with a hearing that could compromise not only his academic career but also M's. The protagonist, increasingly dissociated from the world, finds the right and necessary distraction with the arrival of Vladimir Vladinski, a young and charming teacher of Russian origin who has just arrived at the institute, and who quickly becomes the object of her obsession.
Vladimir and Rachel
Rachel Weisz - extraordinary, and the main reason for interest in the entire series - addresses the camera directly from the very first scene, with the breaking of the fourth wall which will be a constant throughout all eight episodes comprising the first season of Vladimir who, naturally, is not who everyone thinks but rather the "dork" played with appropriate solemnity by Leo Woodall.
The format seems to immediately recall Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag, but where there the recurrence of dialoguing with the audience through impeccable timing and genuine vulnerability was elevated, here the expedient is used in a way that is not always cohesive and indeed often intrusive, almost like a gratuitous quirk rather than an actually necessary narrative resource. The protagonist talks too much, explains too much, treats the audience as if they were slow, going so far as to explicitly state in words what has already been shown on screen, when instead she should let her actions speak for themselves.
An aloof figure, with whom it is often difficult to find common ground, however interesting in certain passages when the script targets, with certainly not benevolent tones, that cancel culture which, paradoxically, is leading back to a new bigotry disguised as moral integrity.
From Page to Screen
Julia May Jonas, a writer making her television debut after a career as a university professor herself and therefore directly involved in certain dynamics, here obviously fictionalized, had first brought the story in her eponymous book, which she adapted for the small screen with perhaps excessive fidelity. What worked on the page as a stream of consciousness of an out-of-control narrator becomes in live-action a constant monologue, which undermines rather than increases dramatic tension. It eliminates mystery and the audience's ability to make their own interpretations or a simple 2+2, causing them to gradually lose interest over the episodes, until that final rush with almost Kingian echoes.
The name Vladimir, leaving aside geopolitical discussions irrelevant here, brings to mind Nabokov, the author of Lolita who bore that very baptismal name. The problematic age gaps in teacher-student relationships thus recall his great classic, although here all the characters seem unhinged and victims of their own mistakes. From the bisexual daughter in search of identity and peace - and with two such parents, it's certainly not simple - to the wife of the object of desire recovering from a deep depression, from teachers full of tics and phobias to students who act as judges and executioners, the series puts a lot of meat on the fire, without however finding the necessary synthesis to address the numerous themes with lucidity.
And so the operation works better when it throws itself into total farce, abandoning other pretensions except that of entertaining an audience ready to accept the neuroses of a deeply imperfect protagonist, who often uses her imagination to dream of hot sexual evolutions with that very not-so-dark object of desire, a goal to be grasped at all costs, even at the expense of the emotional coherence of the story itself.