REVIEW | ‘Killing Eve’ reinvigorates the old story of detective and serial killer
There is an uncomfortable humor that permeates “Killing Eve” and which is due to, largely, the social maladjustment of its protagonists, the secret agent Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh-Yang, from “Grey’s Anatomy”) and the serial killer Villanelle (Jodie Comer).
It’s true that a non-conventional behavior is already expected of a psychopath, but Villanelle has a something of originality that pops up since her first evilness displayed on screen: the slap in the ice cream bowl of a smiling little girl. Polastri isn’t an example of normality either. Disdains of schedules, orders and hierarchies, lives inside of his own theories and barely notice the presence of her friends or husband.
During the investigations about the deaths of politicians and criminous, the agent get obsessed with the killer and the puzzles that surroundes her, starting a chase that goes through the episodes. And as old as that synopsis sounds, the story is able to keep herself instigant. That’s because Villanelle’s vanity provoques constants inversions of the cat and rat roles at the plot, until it become hard to know who is looking up whom.
The series’ dark comicality is reinforced by the Tarantino’s style deaths, that are at the same time non-sense and afflictive — like in the scene that a pointed hair catcher tears the ocular globe of a magnate.
Her humor and the courage to walk the thin line that separates it from the ridiculous ensures to “Killing Eve” its ares of novelty. The discomfort and the brutality join together in a product that can be light and fluid, those that can be watched, easily, on a weekend.
Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer deserves a special recognition: they incorporate a kind of villainous charisma essential to the their characters, and which is capable to turn attractive even the most petulant and egocentric personality.
The second season, whose filmings have already ended, premiers in april 7. Emerald Fennell is the new writer, replacing Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag”). Fennell is a beginner at the activity, and is most known for her job as an actress (“The Danish Girl”). Waller-Bridge, however, should continuous at the backstages, now as producer.
It’s worth twisting that “Killing Eve” to keeps the acid and slightly dark humor that marked it’s debut season, and thanks to which the old story about the detective and the serial killer, already so much explored on TV and cinema, looks reinvigorated.
