I really did want to try to get into Tell Me You Love Me. It seemed like the answer to many a false-noted romantic drama on TV, certainly for soap operas. If anything though it's the total 180 of a soap- it's meant to be too realistic, but without a sense of humor to it that a weepy melodrama might dish out every now and again. In the bulk of the series I've seen so far (of the first season) I can't remember even chuckling once- yes, even with the one guy and his sometimes dipping into, color us shocked, middle aged masturbation- and while there's attempts made to get deeper into the psychology of the characters it's hard to ever really care about what any of them do.
Scenes From a Marriage it definitely is not, as it examines three off-shoots of a therapists clients: a girl who sleeps around a lot on her boyfriends (and, apparently, has it sort of unwritten-as-law that every episode shows her having sex); a cold career woman wants a baby, the man tries and deep down doesn't, and just as they're about to break up wham it's finally a bun in the oven; a typical married couple with kids deal with their sexual hang-ups. And, after a while, we notice the old therapist and her love affair too.
It all weaves in and out together in each episode, hand-held like it's Cassavetes revived as a zombie, and after a while when the characters talk it...turns...dull. It's not even that the actors are all that bad (actually, Michelle Borth is, aside from the obvious which she's good at), and once in a while a really striking dramatic scene will stand out when emotions finally flare up. And of course subtlety can be a writer or an actor's best friend at times, but this goes into overkill, and for the sake of characters that are closed-off, shrill, sexually frustrated *well-off* suburbanites.
All this said, the series does provide some of the most graphic but lucid sex scenes ever filmed, not just for premium cable TV. Instead of the high gloss of a Cinemax skin-flick ala Passion Cove, or a gynecological lesson by way of Ron Jeremy, it's real bodies copulating like real bodies, where the line between what is faked or what is real heat and penetration is blurred, and it gives Bertolucci a run for his money in the no-punches-pulled style of film-making. So those scenes, scattered as they are episode to episode (and yes, you pervs, they are worth watching for those alone), are up to the hype.
But the rest of the series, in a way, doesn't really call out as something that will last that long. It makes its mark, but the writers and directors don't have anything new to put onto the table with relationship crises and whatnot. There aren't any real revelatory statements that are made that haven't been made thousands of times before, from Shakespeare onward. But if naturalistic acting, VERY naturalistic acting, is your thing, have at it. Personally, I can't help but think the satire in a work like Knocked Up has at least a bit more truth and complexity coinciding with the sense of humor about it than with Tell Me You Love Me.
Scenes From a Marriage it definitely is not, as it examines three off-shoots of a therapists clients: a girl who sleeps around a lot on her boyfriends (and, apparently, has it sort of unwritten-as-law that every episode shows her having sex); a cold career woman wants a baby, the man tries and deep down doesn't, and just as they're about to break up wham it's finally a bun in the oven; a typical married couple with kids deal with their sexual hang-ups. And, after a while, we notice the old therapist and her love affair too.
It all weaves in and out together in each episode, hand-held like it's Cassavetes revived as a zombie, and after a while when the characters talk it...turns...dull. It's not even that the actors are all that bad (actually, Michelle Borth is, aside from the obvious which she's good at), and once in a while a really striking dramatic scene will stand out when emotions finally flare up. And of course subtlety can be a writer or an actor's best friend at times, but this goes into overkill, and for the sake of characters that are closed-off, shrill, sexually frustrated *well-off* suburbanites.
All this said, the series does provide some of the most graphic but lucid sex scenes ever filmed, not just for premium cable TV. Instead of the high gloss of a Cinemax skin-flick ala Passion Cove, or a gynecological lesson by way of Ron Jeremy, it's real bodies copulating like real bodies, where the line between what is faked or what is real heat and penetration is blurred, and it gives Bertolucci a run for his money in the no-punches-pulled style of film-making. So those scenes, scattered as they are episode to episode (and yes, you pervs, they are worth watching for those alone), are up to the hype.
But the rest of the series, in a way, doesn't really call out as something that will last that long. It makes its mark, but the writers and directors don't have anything new to put onto the table with relationship crises and whatnot. There aren't any real revelatory statements that are made that haven't been made thousands of times before, from Shakespeare onward. But if naturalistic acting, VERY naturalistic acting, is your thing, have at it. Personally, I can't help but think the satire in a work like Knocked Up has at least a bit more truth and complexity coinciding with the sense of humor about it than with Tell Me You Love Me.