Obsession (Netflix miniseries 4 episodes)
Rating:*** 1/2 (three and a half)
It was just the sex, right? At the end of this breathless odyssey across an anathematized amorous captivity, I was left wondering, what made them do it—the bride-to-be and the bridegroom’s father are trapped in a lustful liaison which can only go one way. As we hurl towards catastrophe, the man William Farrow an eminent surgeon risks his entire life, career and family for a …for a…what? What is it that he gets so magnetized to his son’s girlfriend Anna Barton?
And why does she risk everything to have sex with her future father-in-law? Not once or twice but over and over again in a stripped down bare apartment where she repeatedly objectifies him, makes him strip while she remains largely clothed.Perhaps a revenge on all extra-marital affairs on screen where it is the women we see naked?
We watch in horror revulsion embarrassment and dread as William Farrow, played with magnificent inevitability by Richard Armitage,sinks deeper and deeper into his slavish obsession to possess his son’s girlfriend body and soul, largely the former.
It is terrifying to watch a man of such stature demean himself to such a degree. The series, just four episode , is stupendous in its impact while portraying an erotic attachment that is hideously inappropriate.
Of course it is messy and it ends in profound irreversible tragedy, as it is bound to. You can’t fool around with sacred relations and get away with it.What makes Obsession so stunning in its impact is the sense of tragic inevitability that plays in the narrative from the moment William sets his eyes on Anna, played with an insane confidence by Charlie Murphy, in a crowded bar.
The physical attraction is palpable. The pounding music suggests guilty pleasure and imminent catastrophe. This is a very heart-in-the-mouth take on groin grinding. The sex, between William and Anna, so vividly detailed in Josephine Hart’s soul-shattering 1991 novel Damage, was missing in the Jeremy Iron-Juliette Binoche film Damage based on the novel.
In this series the sex is opened up. It is the guiding force of this lustful pernicious liaison. Even while knowing that disaster awaits these two clandestine trespassers, I was shocked and numbed when it came.
A price had to be paid. But not this, for God’s sake, not this!
The performances particularly Richard Armitage and Charlie Murphy conveys the desperate anxiety of two people who know they are not supposed to be physically intimate, but they can’t help it. Interestingly Williams’s wife and son are played by actors of Indian origin, Indira Verma and Rish Shah. The son comes across as disturbingly wimpy. Is it meant to give the lustful liaison between his girlfriend and father a kind of unholy sanction?
