Should we watch Love & Death, the new thriller from Canal + with Elizabeth Olsen? (critical)
Under the glaze of the prestige series, David E. Kelley’s new production, inspired by a “true crime” does not take on all the scale expected.
The Candy Montgomery affair continues to fascinate Hollywood. Not long ago, it was adapted by a certain Nick Antosca with Jessica Biel in the title role. This time it is Elizabeth Olsen – freed from her obligations at Marvel – who plays the Texan mother accused of the murder of Betty Gore in the mini-series Love & Death, which starts this evening on Canal + in France. Betty Gore being the wife of the man with whom she was having an affair. Behind this new production, it is above all the figure of David E. Kelleyex-pope of television fiction (Ally McBeal), which makes you want to believe it.
In the wake of Big Little Lies or The Undoingthe screenwriter is once again infatuated with these housewives wrung out which bend under the injunctions of domestic life, and promises to inject a little roughness into the study of the characters. This is partially true, through that of Candy herself, brilliantly embodied by Olsen, whose trajectory exposes an x-ray of the couple, marital despair and buried desires. It’s difficult to say the same about the rest of the female characters: her rival, Betty Gore, suffers from hasty characterization and serves above all as a foil to her fickle husband and companion (Jesse Plemonsalways impeccable).
Kelley, who perhaps missed the opportunity to tell the action in a subjective manner, enters into an almost linear story construction, which fortunately finds an extra soul in the production of Lesli Linka Glatter (Homeland). It gives a dizzying sensation to this little everyday theater, ready to tip into the macabre.
