Reese Witherspoon's career-high performance underpins handsome show

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This was published 3 years ago

Reese Witherspoon's career-high performance underpins handsome show

By Karl Quinn

Little Fires Everywhere is a compelling, if occasionally implausible, story about motherhood —whether it is principally a blood tie or something that can be willed and whether the bond between a woman and someone else's child can be stronger than the one between that woman and her own child.

Above all, it's about whether the "good life" a mother might strive to provide for her child is a material thing, something less tangible or a combination of both. Intersecting with all that are questions of race and class, and how these influence the notion of what constitutes a "good" mother.

Reese Witherspoon plays Elena in the TV adaptation of Celeste Ng's book Little Fires Everywhere.

Reese Witherspoon plays Elena in the TV adaptation of Celeste Ng's book Little Fires Everywhere. Credit: Erin Simkin/Hulu

These strong themes play out across multiple storylines and drive the plot of this eight-part series far more than the putative mystery that opens it — namely, who set fire to the grand home occupied by small-town journalist Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon), her lawyer husband Bill (Joshua Jackson) and their four teenage children.

All fingers point to Izzy (Megan Stott), youngest and most rebellious of the kids, a budding artist drawn inexorably to the family's prickly new housekeeper, Mia Warren (Kerry Washington), even as Mia's daughter, Pearl (Lexi Underwood), gravitates towards Elena.

There is an unmistakable air of Big Little Lies, another book adaptation produced by Witherspoon in part as a vehicle for her. Everywhere there are secrets and lies, though there's nothing quite as big as the cover-up of a possible murder. It's more about the compromises and trade-offs people make in building a life and the resulting resentments that are never quite laid to rest.

That's all reason enough to watch this handsome, well-made show. But for me, there are extraneous factors that make it even more fascinating.

Kerry Washington plays Mia, whose experience and perspective as an African-American woman is central in the show.

Kerry Washington plays Mia, whose experience and perspective as an African-American woman is central in the show. Credit: Erin Simkin/Hulu

First, there's the involvement of Lynn Shelton, the American writer-director of a string of low-budget, relationship-driven, semi-improvised "mumblecore" movies. The best of those I have seen is the delightful three-hander Your Sister's Sister (2011), starring Emily Blunt, Mark Duplass (himself a key figure in the mumblecore scene) and Rosemarie DeWitt, who has a small but significant role in Little Fires Everywhere.

Shelton was just 54 when she died of a mysterious blood disease the weekend before this series dropped. She had in recent years developed a parallel career directing television — it certainly paid a lot better than film — and the four episodes she helmed here (she also serves as a producer) probably count as the biggest, most mainstream, work of her career.

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The other key factor is, of course, Witherspoon. She optioned Celeste Ng's novel before it was even published and made it the September 2017 pick for Reese's Book Club, which ensured it a platform most novelists can only dream of.

To date, Witherspoon has optioned eight titles of the 35 she has picked as books of the month, ensuring a steady stream of projects in which she has a key role, on screen or off or both, as well as audience anticipation for the filmed version.

It's a somewhat calculated strategy, but I am full of admiration not just for the way she has determinedly taken the reins of her career as Hollywood was turning its back on her, but also for the way she has simultaneously embraced and subverted the image in which she was cast, shining a light on the less appealing aspects of the kind of characters that made her a star in the first place.

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This show's Elena, for instance, is the adult version of Legally Blonde's Elle Woods, only time has chipped away at her perky ambition and can-do attitude and left in its place sharp edges of frustration and disappointment. It's a masterful portrayal that balances our delight in what she was with our horror at what she has become.

This is, in fact, one of the best performances of Witherspoon's career. It's doubtful there's a more self-aware actress in Hollywood, or one who is better at challenging our expectations even as she is meeting them.

Little Fires Everywhere, Amazon Prime Video. Follow the author on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on Twitter @karlkwin

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