The Curse: you have to see this crazy series with Emma Stone (review)

Gentrification, reality TV, micropenis and curses are on the program in this dizzying and perfectly indefinable series, with Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder. Lovers of curiosities, this is for you.

What’s fabulous about The Curse, is that even after having devoured all of its ten episodes, we would be hard-pressed to define what genre the series belongs to, or even what it is about really, if reality is a valid reading grid in this specific case. This remarkable object produced by A24 is Nathan Fielder’s first co-creation (the very disconcerting The Rehearsal And Nathan for Youunfortunately unpublished here) and Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems, Good Time). Emma Stone and Fielder play Whitney and Asher, newlyweds with a Colgate smile, stars of a show that follows them in their daily lives as developers of overpriced eco-responsible homes in Española, a small town in New Mexico.

Incomprehensible couple: he is a ball of embarrassment, worryingly bland and banal; she radiates as much as she seems trapped in this relationship. Convinced of doing good but mocked behind their backs by the locals, these little preppy white people want to reduce their impact on the Latino and Native American communities they displace, by finding them jobs and new housing.

Existential void

A biting satire of greenwashing, forced gentrification and the “white savior” runs through the entire season, but collides with a story of an alleged curse (a portion of chicken disappearing from a prepared meal) and more subplots or less striking (Asher’s micropenis; the obsession of the show’s producer, played by an imperial Benny Safdie, to prove that he is not drunk behind the wheel). Director of most of the episodes, Fielder adds an extra layer of bizarreness by filming the case either as reality TV or as a paranoid thriller. The series advances with a false rhythm that explodes traditional serial storytelling, while the fusion of the worlds of Safdie and Fielder makes it perfectly elusive.

Difficult to recommend to those allergic to “experiences” (the final episode, insane, is a peak of strangeness), The Curse takes impossible detours to better describe a modern malaise and a very generational feeling of existential emptiness. But you’ll need at least a second viewing to make sure you’re right: we’ll go back and keep you posted.

The Curse, created by Nathan Fielder & Benny Safdie. With Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder, Benny Safdie… One episode per week on Paramount+, ten episodes in total.