Recovering Douglas Sirk-style melodrama in contemporary cinema seems like a task reserved for a few like Todd Haynes. But Far from the sky That’s a little far away. perfect livesbased on the Belgian film Duellesfrom 2019, is an exercise in recovering that classic genre to which on this occasion traces of a nineties psychological thriller are added and yes, an undisguised air of a TV movie – which is evident in its original title, “Instinct of a Mother” – conceived as a duel between his two divas and producers, Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway, two desperate women-mothers whose increasingly less subtle exchange of barbs makes up the entire (adjusted) footage of the film.
If something shows perfect lives is that, like the two suburban houses of the protagonists, comedy and drama are neighbors who fight and love each other. As the enmity between the two ladies increases, the impression is left that Benoît Delhomme’s film, absolutely tragic as it is, only needs a slight adjustment in tone to slide into black comedy (and the characterization of something sacred like children like this). indicates it). Chastain and Hathaway seem aware of this and handle the paranoid dose of the drama well, which gradually brings it closer to a thriller. Its final twist, despite being conventional by the standards of a domestic horror from the era of Single White Woman Searchingit is enjoyable.
During the first half, Delhomme enhances the atmosphere of the evening in an idyllic atmosphere without the most accessory or ideological issues (the disdain of the male part, the insertion of women in the labor market or the criticism of the “American way”) They are little more than tiptoes to detonate change. In Perfect Lives The only thing that truly matters is the show of two actresses willing to elevate a telefilm material to the category of a worthy feature film, one that plays with the anachronistic and that reflects on how guilt can fuel madness, without avoiding the ironic implications of the affair.
