Rachel Weisz keeps Vladimir amusing through some uneven storytelling. Her professor’s midlife crisis is worth trying if difficult people are your kind of company, though the frequent fantasies grow repetitive.
Vladimir is worth considering for Rachel Weisz, provided an uneven midlife-crisis comedy sounds like an acceptable use of eight episodes. Adapted from Julia May Jonas’s novel, it follows a professor whose desire makes her an unreliable guide to her own behaviour. The attraction is the chance to hear an intelligent woman explaining herself without having to accept her explanation. Weisz makes that compelling, but the series keeps interrupting her with fantasies that become less revealing as they accumulate.
Leo Woodall has the title role, though the professor is the more rewarding character. Weisz plays M with enough comic energy to keep her failings from becoming a solemn case study. We laughed at M’s fantasies, largely because Weisz makes the professor’s loss of composure so amusing. There is pleasure in watching an articulate person make such a poor job of explaining herself. The performance lets us enjoy her company without insisting that her judgement deserves our respect.
The first-person narration is crucial, since it lets M present her own account of desire and ambition. Matthew Capodicasa and Jeanie Bergen are among the writers, and the material is sharpest when it leaves us to notice what her account cannot quite justify. Its handling of morality and sexual politics is less assured when the themes begin to feel like subjects for discussion. We need to understand what these questions cost M, not merely recognise that they are difficult.
Cinematographers Tim Orr and François Dagenais, with production designer Sharon Lomofsky, help give the fantasies their heightened presentation. The choice makes sense for a programme so firmly attached to one woman’s wants: everyday restraint would hardly serve the comedy. Yet these passages too often repeat the fact of her desire when we are ready to learn something else about it. Their frequency makes them progressively less effective.
Editors Tim Streeto, John Grenham, Ken Eluto and Meg Reticker face a recurring problem of rhythm. A fantasy can interrupt an awkward situation entertainingly, but repeated interruptions make it harder for that situation to develop. Across eight episodes, the pace is uneven enough for us to start anticipating the next diversion rather than worrying about M. That is a substantial limitation in a series which depends on our willingness to stay with her account.
The midlife-crisis comedy has plenty of room for bad conduct, and Vladimir is right not to make its protagonist agreeable. It is less persuasive when it hesitates to follow her into anything messier. The writing sometimes seems anxious to keep us on her side, although Weisz is funny enough to remain watchable when we disapprove of M. We would have welcomed more of the discomfort that her performance is capable of producing.
A taste for academic comedy will help, though M’s job is less interesting here than her capacity to talk herself into trouble. Anyone hoping for a sustained examination of sexual politics should lower that expectation. Try it for Weisz, and allow yourself to stop if the fantasies wear thin.
