Crimes and mysteries in the luxury of Taormina
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The start of the second season of The White Lotus is a textbook of the anthological series: we are again in a super-luxury hotel located in a stupendous location tourist; one of the guests dives into the sea for one last swim before returning home, and she finds a body in the water. Valentina (a talented Sabrina Impacciatore), manager of the structure, arrives on the scene in a panic, cynically commenting that luckily the sea is not their property. Cut, we go back a week, with Valentina herself greeting guests arriving on a boat. Who died? What happened?
As in the previous season, the crime frames one pièce of social satire onelite of the very rich. In a renewed and well-assorted cast (Aubrey Plaza, Michael Imperioli, F. Murray Abraham) the only return is that of the wonderful and terrible Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), always immersed in self-pity, ready to destroy the life of anyone who takes her approach. This time, however, the attention of the author Mike White is less focused on the dynamics of class and ethnicity, and more on the power relations in interpersonal relationships between eroticism, betrayal, prostitution and false friendships.
The other novelty particularly interests Italian spectators: the location tourist is Taormina, and the whole series was shot in Sicily. The look on Italy of US productions is often stereotyped and unnerving, but here there is a lot of care: no mafia, the Italian characters are played by Italian actors who speak in a correct local dialect. Even in the music there is a certain research: the inevitable classics (Modugno, Mina, assorted 60s) are flanked by less conventional choices (much De André, Eugenio Bennato, Miss Keta).
The postcard effect is there but it is self-aware: from the rocks to the baroque palaces, the splendid Sicilian landscapes seduce in a disturbing, even hostile way. The story is punctuated by lead shots on a black and agitated sea, like an abyss ready to swallow us. The movement from idyll to tragedy that narratively structures the series coincides with the progressive movement of the characters from the hotel pool to the sea, that is the place where death will materialize.
The White Lotus
Mike White
Sky and Now, starting tomorrow
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