Nicole Kidman is flow personified in Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers. A soft blond cascade over her head, satiny white two-pieces hanging shapely over her tall frame, long bead necklaces swinging languorously off her chest, and her trademark gazelle strides—Masha, a wellness guru at her California wellness retreat Tranquillum House, is the all-glistening, inner-gazing wellness guru cliche. What makes her interesting and somewhat redeems her is that she is a military general when it comes to executing her healing “protocols” on her rich clients. The tease of danger begins from the moment she steps into the frame.
Based on Liane Moriarty’s bestseller of the same title, Nine Perfect Stranger, which dropped on Amazon Prime Video this week, is a deft wellness drama couched as a mystery and thriller. Directed by Jonathan Levine and created by David E. Kelly (and written by David E. Kelly and John Henry-Butterworth), Nine Perfect Strangers captures a pulse that seems instinctual in the post-isolation era we live in: Look within us, heal, transform for better.
The series began streaming after HBO’s The White Lotus dropped its last episode on Disney+Hotstar, in which the luxury trappings of a Hawaii resort set a motley group of Americans on a path of self-discovery without intending to. Human beings are stepping out, connecting with other human beings again, and seeking elixirs in wild outbacks to make sense of their lives. And then what happens? Both shows explore this opportune theme.
Let’s meet the perfect strangers first: A romance novelist at the ebb of her creative prowess and youth (Frances played by Melissa McCarthy); a former football star masticating his moment of ignominy through addiction and self-loathing (Tony by Bobby Cannavale); a gay cynic and compulsive consumerist with a past as ruinous as the rest (Lars played by Luke Evans); a social media addict with a Lamborghini and with a deep lack of self-worth and her disinterested husband (Jessica played by Samara Weaving and Ben played by Melvin Gregg); a mother and divorcee who swings between rage and empathy (Carmel played by Regina Hall); and the Marconis, a family of three crushed by the suicide of their 21-year-old son (Napoleon played by Michael Shannon, Heather played by Asher Keddie and Zoe played by Grace Van Patten).
While mysterious threatening messages bombard Masha’s phone, this group prepares for “the protocol”, which includes digging graves and lying horizontal in the pit with their eyes closed, imagining their own deaths while Masha and her team of two (a couple played by Tiffany Boone and Many Jacinto) chuck soil on their bodies from above.
In the beginning, as the set-up unravels, the damaged bunch trigger each other to difficult mental spaces and would rather not be probed. Spread over eight episodes, the series takes us on a winded path to reveal whether the nine will connect with each other, what their healing and transformation will mean, and what danger Masha, whom, we know from tacky flashbacks, was a corporate go-getter, ambitious to a fault in her first life, will unleash on this group, herself and Tranquillum.
Nine Perfect Strangers makes wellness missions enticing as well as excruciatingly painful—the absolute truth about wellness missions, that is. The pain is spelled out like it’s the biggest theme of the series: “They have good lives. They come here to suffer,” Masha declares.
The set-up prepares the viewer for some sort of grand mystery to reveal in the end, especially around Masha. But the intrigue that propels the story forward becomes limp as we go along, and the script fails to give its characters, especially Masha, the specificity they require to be universally resonant.
Is wellness for the rich only? There’s some feeble satirising to tell us, yes, maybe. Is psychological ruin the most difficult kind to mend? The writers seem half-hearted about that too. The Japanese Kintsugi bowl is a metaphor that Masha uses with the group early on, but we don’t see that kind of beautiful, arduous, built-up mending.
Kidman is mono-toned in her portrayal of the Russian guru-cum-general with a past. She is a sum of her weapons and strategies, articulated with a hushed voice and deeply static gaze that have become her signature these days: lower the cortisol; it’s all in the heart and head, there’s nothing on your phone, let it go; we don’t believe in random here; I need to fuck with all of you; in death there’s birth, etc.
The rest of the cast has some memorable scenes of devolving and upsurging, and Melissa McCarthy and Michael Shannon stand out.
On the other hand, The White Lotus, written and directed by Mike White, whose point isn’t as much about healing and transformation as simply holiday states of mind conducive to self-discovery, has more sinewy psychological maps, even within the constraints of a mini-series over six episodes.
Here too, characters are in desperate need of a break from themselves, and here too, they are in for life-altering shocks. But characters have definite graphs and journeys are contained with depth and precise details. The White Lotus also manages a canvas of class dynamic as a backdrop to the resort managed by Hawaiian natives, and this extra layer lifts the series up to a satisfactorily mortifying but cathartic climax.
What both shows manage with supreme dexterity is establishing and executing visual languages and sound schemes soaked in colours, textures, frames, sounds and music that perfectly accentuate the dynamic between combustible minds and emotional histories and external healing solutions.
The wellness industry is mammoth; its bait is palpable everywhere, from Instagram to nondescript neighbourhood corners of cities and small towns. We are in a collective state of yearning for a magic pill or protocol that will make the malaise or the isolation go away. It is almost like the creators of both these shows catch a pulse of the affluent everywhere in the world in this post-pandemic era. The sound design of The White Lotus is a work of genius. In Nine Perfect Strangers, nature is as much a force as vitamin fruit swirls in slow-motion—cinematographer Yves Bélanger goes unapologetically for plush, busy frames in which luxury tries to translate as nuance.
We are clearly in the middle of a moment in screenwriting when slow, psychological unfolding is increasingly fuelling narratives, plots and characters, even in crime thrillers and comedies. Nine Perfect Strangers and The White Lotus have the best set-up for this kind of writing—both eminently seductive as they jumpstart on the difficult-to-attain bliss.
Also read: Nicole Kidman leads 'Nine Perfect Strangers' on quite a trip
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