In an astonishing scene from the brand new Showtime sequence The Curse (premiering November 10), we watch as a useless and determined married couple, Whitney (Emma Stone) and Asher (Nathan Fielder) Siegel, categorical the complete, ugly complication of their humanity. Whitney is having bother getting a sweater off; the zipper gained’t work and the garment is now caught on her head. Asher tries to assist, tugging and tugging till the sweater lastly pops off and husband and spouse fall backwards in several instructions, breaking into the merry, romantic laughter of a sweetly non-public second.
Then, Whitney has an thought. They need to attempt to re-create what simply occurred—solely this time, they’ll movie it. It might make them appear happier, extra likable to Whitney’s Instagram followers, and in the event that they current as a goofy, relatable couple, HGTV could decide up the pilot that the Siegels have filmed for the community. Makes an attempt at duplicating the second don’t go effectively—it’s all quite embarrassing, actually—and earlier than too lengthy, Whitney and Asher are in a bitter, foundation-shaking argument. It’s a protracted scene, humorous and dreadfully unhappy, that maybe greatest represents the core strengths of The Curse.
The sequence was created by Fielder and Benny Safdie, the extremely cool New York actor and filmmaker behind Uncut Gems and Good Time (who additionally just lately appeared on display screen in Oppenheimer). Fielder is understood for his intricately conceived pseudo-doc comedy sequence Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, daring and creative and (for me, anyway) deeply disagreeable workouts in social commentary and abject awkwardness. Safdie is extra of a kinetic stylist; the movies he’s made together with his brother, Josh, are frenzied and edgy and grim regardless of their gleaming. This makes Safdie and Fielder an attention-grabbing artistic pair, artists with two disparate approaches that fascinatingly commingle on The Curse. It’s a bleak present, a research in bulldozing solipsism, particularly of the upper-middle-class white folks selection.
Fielder and Safdie’s premise is intelligent. The Curse is ready in Española, a dusty New Mexico city north of Santa Fe, tucked alongside the banks of the Rio Grande. The inhabitants is essentially Native and Latino, and the city abuts tribal lands which might be, as they’ve been since this nation’s woeful founding, disputed. Whitney and Asher have parachuted in, claiming to be delicate to these points, to actually wish to uplift the group—a lot of it very poor—quite than change it. However after all, the carbon impartial so-called “passive houses” that Whitney designs—mirrored cubes stuffed with tasteful, Pinterest-ready finishings—are prohibitively costly. The one individuals who can afford to purchase them usually are not from Española. Nor can the locals actually afford to buy (or are they terribly fascinated about purchasing at) the stylish boutique and generically smooth espresso store that the Siegels have introduced into city in a witless effort to stimulate the financial system.
In our actual world, a number of HGTV stars, a lot of them married {couples}, have made their names in small cities and blighted cities throughout America, supposedly uplifting them via the restorative magic of residence design and actual property. Swirling round sequence like Hometown Takeover and Fixer Higher, although, are darkish questions on gentrification, concerning the sorry hole between actuality TV and actuality itself. What an excellent matter for a probing scripted TV sequence, one which condemns via exacting mockery.
It’s pathetically amusing to look at Asher, so uptight and stilted and socially inept, attempt to Chip Gaines himself into an affable doofus for the cameras. Stone shrewdly approximates the consoling tones of a wannabe empath and do-gooder, all of the smarmy concern for the plight of the underclass and the well being of our planet that’s actually meant to replicate effectively on Whitney herself. There’s, in these fascinating portraits of two noxious folks, some measure of real compassion. Whitney and Asher are maybe extra within the means of rotting than already totally rotten; perhaps at a while, earlier than the start of this sequence, they had been individuals who actually cared. However they’ve badly misplaced their manner, and The Curse brutally delineates the havoc they wreak in looking for it once more.
The satire right here is each on-the-nose and intriguingly nuanced. Whereas the Siegels’ present, hideously titled Fliplanthropy, doesn’t actually give a shit concerning the lived realities of the folks it claims to be serving to, The Curse does—to some extent. Most of the performers enjoying townsfolk are actual locals, and the storytelling does develop to offer some consideration to the folks whom Whitney and Asher are so heedlessly afflicting.
