A disclaimer about this review of Disclaimer. This is not a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all names, characters, places, and events mentioned are not the product of my imagination, but born of the minds of Alfonso Cuarón, Renée Knight and others who worked on the TV series to which it is devoted. What you are about to read is, in other words, true, however preposterous it may seem. Any inaccuracies are of course my own and may be the result of Streaming Brain, a condition whose distressing symptoms include befuddlement, growing unease and – in rare cases – full-blown despair.
Now that’s out of the way, let us begin. Disclaimer, a swish production in seven “chapters” (the pretension here – most of us call them episodes – is instantly alarming), has been heading towards us like a meteor or a cow pat ever since the Venice Film Festival, where it premiered. Based on Renée Knight’s 2015 bestseller of the same name, it’s written and directed by Cuarón (Gravity, Roma), and stars Cate Blanchett as Catherine Ravenscroft, a crusading British documentary-maker. In supporting roles are (surprise!) Catherine’s outstanding designer wardrobe and Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays her husband, Robert. He does something with trusts and NGOs because, although he is Posh, he is also Decent.
Apparently, Catherine is at the height of her powers: when the series begins, Christiane Amanpour has just presented her with a Top Award for Nobility, Integrity and Abiding Genius (an inaccuracy may have slipped in here, sorry). But on the very same evening, she receives a slim novel in the post, one she unaccountably decides to read before bed. Uh-oh. Next thing we know, she’s vomiting performatively in her Farrow & Ball-ed bathroom. No, she hasn’t had too much of Bob’s exquisite vintage Latour (“sandalwood, cassis”). She thinks, in fact, knows the woman in the book is based on her, and that all her secrets are about to be revealed to Robert and the world.
It’s genuinely hard to know where to begin with this tripe. I always find it funny how much actors love playing journalists – in real life, they loathe us – and how ridiculously wrong they inevitably get it. Let us move swiftly past Catherine’s clothes, home, office and assistants, her fishmonger and even her notebook, all of which are totally luxe. Why does Baron Cohen address every remark he makes to her as if she’s a total stranger? And why do they both talk to their adult son, Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee), as if this is the first time they’ve laid eyes on him? Wooden doesn’t quite cover it. When the three of them are together, it’s like the last minutes of a sale at Furniture Village.
The evil mastermind behind the spiteful paperback is a retired schoolteacher called Mr Brigstocke (Kevin Kline), whose son, Jonathan, Catherine knew a long time ago – something we discover in a series of extended flashbacks featuring a young Catherine (Leila George) who looks absolutely nothing like the older Catherine. But if the (porn-adjacent) preposterousness here is laughable, even more embarrassing is the fact that Cuarón’s script comes with a mimsy narrator (Indira Varma), who simply will not stop intoning banalities that pass for wisdom, sometimes even in the second person.
It’s excruciating. “You look in the mirror… you have regained your focus… You’re hurt… He’s being selfish…” Nothing is shown. Everything is told. And the cheese! It’s whiffier than anything down at the deli where Catherine likes to shop (it seems the slick assistants know nothing about provenance). “Bursting with desire,” she announces, moving into pop-psych mode. “Her sexuality in its pure form, separate from him…” Catherine, we understand, has committed some kind of moral crime for which Mr Brigstocke is going to punish her. Basically, his novel, self-published but all over the windows of the swankiest bookshop in Notting Hill nonetheless, is only just the beginning.
In a way, it’s all rather sweet: retro, even. Sole meunière for dinner. Red underwear for sex. Ex-public-school boys who regard travelling by bus as a novelty. Journalists whose every move is handsomely remunerated. Novels so powerful they reduce people to snivelling wrecks. If only, you think bitterly in the moments before you reach for the remote.
[See also: The horrors of BBC “Storyville”’s “Surviving October 7: We Will Dance Again”]
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This article appears in the 09 Oct 2024 issue of the New Statesman, 100 days that shook Labour