• Serial killer, luxurious sleaze

The Deuce comes with the prestigious seal of David Simon and Georges Pelecanos, who already worked together on The Wire and in another series that went through less acclaim, despite their almost comparable merits: Treme , set in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina . It is, like the two mentioned, a choral story that starts in the early 1970s and extends until the mid-1980s, focused on the world of prostitution, drug addiction, underworld, police corruption and the rise and heyday of the porn industry . With these elements, clichés are inevitable, and consequently are not avoided. There may be his main weak point: to promote a prejudice of apathy in the face of repeated and predictable patterns: prostitutes of innocent soul, ruthless pimps, corrupt cops and good cops, gangster and greedy gangsters ...

Another weak point would be James Franco , who, apart from directing some episodes, plays the role of two twins: one who seeks to remain at a level of decency despite his alliance with a gang of malefactors and another who acts as an irredeemable tarambana. In my view, Franco resolves that split with correctness, but I fear he does not convince at all in any of his two characterizations, I do not know if by the limitation of his interpretative skills or by the simplicity of the two roles assigned to him. (On the other hand, Maggie Gyllenhaal , in her role as a street prostitute transformed into a porn film director, does an impeccable and powerful job).

The series has the dignity of good work, good craftsmanship, but perhaps it lacks the intensity of good transcendence. It can be understood as a succession of urban prints - with the backdrop of the Times Square environment turned into a jungle - resolved with narrative methods that embrace a custom that affects more in the vignette than in the conflicting background of the characters. It also presents a risky tendency to sweeten the sleaze , bringing rough situations to a temperature close to that of comedy, without ever reaching a dramatic boiling point.

How could it be otherwise, sex scenes and nudes abound, but it is here a resource that does not intend to eroticize the viewer, but rather the opposite : to show the debasement - and the helplessness - of the body as merchandise .

In the third season, an invisible character makes his appearance that determines not only the lives of the hitherto casual practitioners of casual or paid sex and the workers of the porn industry, but also the global perception of sexuality itself: AIDS . Among the homosexual community, especially, the dream fulfilled of a cheerful and fortuitous promiscuity, without prejudices or taboos, becomes a nightmare ruled by panic.

And good? Well, in this, as in everything, it counts the taste of each one. I confess that some episodes of the first season have made me long - those of the second and third are sped up -, with inert stretches, with some nondescript characters, with the continuous suspicion of an unnecessary stretching of the script. More surface, perhaps, than background. A mosaic of stories, in short, more extensive than intense . All in all, and despite higher expectations, well above average.

However, to be up to date on this series, it would be necessary to be insomniac and at the same time stand still for a long time, and perhaps not even this is achieved, so far I have not had the opportunity to see Open Wounds (the original title is more incisive: Sharp Objects ), designed by Marti Noxon and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée. You begin to see this eight-chapter miniseries and you say: « Another serial killer and crimes with satanic components , with its predictable distribution of misleading suspicions about several characters, waiting for the psychopath to be discovered in the last chapter He was the least suspicious of being. But the turn is amazing - for good - in that gentle people of deep America in which everyone thinks they know everyone. (Yes).

Three actresses in a state of grace ( Amy Adams, Patricia Clarkson and Eliza Scanlen ) interpret profiled characters from a complexity that makes them almost unfathomable: as we learn about them, the less we know in essence about them ... until the revelations late. The investigation into the spooky murder of two teenagers soon goes to the background to focus the story on the thickets and psychological turmoil of the components of a family in which all its members are disturbing.

Based on a novel by Gillian Flynn, the plot admits links as unexpected as perfect. Dense, dark, with gothic touches . And with the final phrase more frightening, more unexpected and more chilling than expected. (One caveat: you have to let the credits of the last episode run until the end. Reserve a shocking surprise.) Outstanding.

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