Susannah Grant writes women who have to make themselves heard, and we rate her highly when she gives them time to speak. She is less convincing when a confrontation is arranged so that nobody could miss who is right.
Fi1m perspective
In Unbelievable (2019), Marie Adler sits with a blanket round her and has to tell a stranger what happened, then tell it again. Grant spends most of the first episode on that repetition, making each fresh interview harder to watch. We were horrified by the repeated questioning of Kaitlyn Dever's Marie, because every retelling puts another demand on someone who has already been assaulted. It is the strongest work of Grant's we have reviewed, and its force comes from staying with a conversation that other dramas might hurry through.
Grant began in television as a writer and producer on Party of Five (1994), whose family conversations and committed ensemble earn its emotion. The later accumulation of misfortune makes the Salingers harder company, a problem with the series rather than something we can lay entirely at her door. Her move into features included the screenplay for Ever After (1998), before her breakthrough with Erin Brockovich (2000). Grant is shrewd about the work involved in taking a utility company to court, and Julia Roberts keeps Soderbergh's film moving through its predictable turns.
The writing in Erin Brockovich also shows how readily Grant can make a confrontation too easy. The company lawyers are cardboard, and the rival lawyer played by Veanne Cox is dismissed in an exchange plainly written to earn applause. In the second half, Erin's visits to families and subsequent arguments with Ed become repetitive. We still recommend it, but Roberts does a good deal of the work of keeping those repetitions lively.
After her feature directing debut, Catch and Release (2006), Unbelievable brought her writing, directing and series creation together. She shares directing duties there with Lisa Cholodenko and Michael Dinner, and the restraint is visible in the hospital examination, filmed without decorative lighting. Editors Jeffrey M. Werner and Keith Henderson interrupt the interviews with brief fragments of the assault, so that remembering feels involuntary. Will Bates's low, sustained score stays beneath the images, leaving the questioning painfully clear.
The detectives' half of Unbelievable settles into a fine, more familiar procedural. We recommend the series with that reservation, rather than pretending all eight episodes match the first. Start there, provided its account of sexual assault and disbelief is something you can face.
Biography
Susannah Grant is an American screenwriter, director and producer. She was born in New York City on 4 January 1963 and studied at Amherst College, graduating in 1984, and the AFI Conservatory. She received the Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting.
Grant worked as a writer and producer on the television series Party of Five from 1994 to 1997. Her film screenplays include Pocahontas (1995), Ever After (1998), 28 Days (2000), Erin Brockovich (2000), In Her Shoes (2005), Charlotte's Web (2006), The Soloist (2009) and The 5th Wave (2016). She received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for Erin Brockovich.
Grant wrote and directed the film Catch and Release (2006). She created, wrote and directed episodes of the Netflix miniseries Unbelievable (2019).
