Those of us who worship at the altar of Rachel Weisz had high hopes for Vladimir, Netflix's new miniseries starring the British actor as a frustrated English professor who becomes giddily unmoored by a sexual fixation on her new colleague Vladimir (played by Leo Woodall). On-screen, Weisz is our preeminent interpreter of erudite but animalistic desire; Woodall is the most reliably lunkish and sleepy-eyed rogue currently acting. Put them together, and it's fair to expect'at a bare minimum'fireworks. So why does Vladimir feel so leaden, so performative' Watching it, I felt detached anthropological curiosity at best, and more often was irritated by how insistently the series proffered close-ups (Vladimir's calves, the folds of his neck, his tacky silver chain) as motifs of desire instead of actual chemistry. Weisz's unnamed professor is a fiendishly unreliable narrator; she breaks the fourth wall constantly to tell viewers things that are obviously untrue, while hammering us with...
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