‘Obsession’ May Be Netflix’s Kinkiest Series Yet
William is a highly successful pediatric surgeon, a little uptight but living a good life with his family in London. But from the moment he locks eyes with Anna, standing across the room at a lavish party, he’s doomed. He knows it. We know it. The fun of Obsession, a new four-part erotic thriller from Netflix, lies in watching it all fall down. That, and a whole lot of kinky, animalistic sex.
This is a tale of amour fou, in which lust tramples everything in its path – family, respectability, and ultimately sanity. The big problem is that Anna (Charlie Murphy) is engaged to be married to Jay (Rish Shah). And William (Richard Armitage) is Jay’s father. William isn’t just entranced by Anna; he’s crestfallen with passion, and Armitage lets you see it in every scene. A bit preoccupied to begin with, he becomes a sort of sex zombie as he and Anna quickly graduate from ravenous looks to all manner of coitus – on the floor, against the wall, kneeling, standing, tied up, blindfolded. The clothes are shucked, the ominous music kicks in, and that’s that, and that, and that. There’s even a tango in Paris. And there’s never any question who’s in charge; Anna sets the rules and dictates the terms. She’s a lot better at compartmentalizing than her older paramour, which means she can make goo-goo eyes at the strapping, sensitive Jay moments before sneaking away with his dad.
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Murphy, with dark, piercing eyes, a messy bob, and a perpetually forming pout, is the star of the show, and Her performance is one reason why Obsession, adapted by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm and Benji Walters from Josephine Hart’s 1991 novel Damage, is more than mere sordid spectacle. She brings high intensity, as does Armitage, whose obsessed adulterer develops the haunted eyes of a shellshocked war veteran. Obsession understands that the most devastating forms of passion are completely irrational, all-encompassing, even nonverbal, and certainly amoral. The mutual assured destruction here is as inevitable as that in any film noir. There’s no use thinking about it or resisting; this elevator is going all the way down. (Hart’s novel was also turned into the fine 1992 Louis Malle film Damage, starring Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche.)
Anna has a quietly monstrous mother (Marion Bailey, quite potent in a small role), and a tortured past, all of which leads her to live on a self-obliterating razor’s edge. “Damaged people are dangerous,” she tells William. “They know they can survive.” You get the feeling this isn’t the first time she’s done something like this. William, on the other hand, is a desperate deer in the headlights, quickly oblivious to his wife (Indira Varma) and daughter (Sonera Angel), neither of whom have a whole lot to do here. Even Jay, wide-eyed and earnest, is mere collateral damage to his father and fiancée’s sexual trainwreck. Everything around Anna and Jay gets thematically blurry as their trysts, and anticipation thereof, serve to blow up the outside world.
Obsession is as much a mood as a story, and the production value is pretty high for something of this ilk. The lighting, both exterior and interior, evokes the proper mix of dread and euphoria. Anne Dudley’s score combines pop atmosphere with Bernard Herrmann-inspired tension. For an erotic thriller on Netflix, Obsession pays admirable attention to craft, and this makes it a lot easier to take the whole thing seriously. It’s far more cinematic than it needs to be.
It’s the kind of story that has trouble ending, and the consequences portion of Obsession isn’t as satisfying as what leads there. We know lives will be ruined, if not lost, and when the bad stuff goes down the results feel a little anticlimactic. The wafting, carnal nightmare grows more literal-minded as the final bows are tied. The fever breaks. The wild animals we’ve been watching revert to human form. The pleasures of Obsession are fully enmeshed with the sins and the tragedy. Those are the terms by which it, and Anna, operate.
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