Spoiler Alert: This text accommodates spoilers for The Excellent Couple.
The Excellent Couple provides viewers that uncommon permission to gawk and dream alike: it’s stuffed with lovely individuals main lovely lives.
Individuals who know me shall be shocked as I write these phrases, however I don’t appear to be Nicole Kidman. Or Dakota Fanning for that matter. Nor do I stay in a multi-million greenback mansion off the attractive Nantucket shoreline with servants, medication, intercourse, and Botox at my beck and name. With that stated, Netflix’s homicide thriller, The Excellent Couple, resonated with me—a reasonably middling Catholic spouse and mom who’s more likely to be consuming an excessive amount of popcorn and bingeing Netflix reveals on a Saturday evening than dancing fabulously in a cocktail costume with my mates to Megan Trainor’s Criminals like we see in that wonderful opening credit of the smash-hit collection.
OK, full honesty right here: generally you may discover me in my kitchen pretending to bounce like this. Generally, too, you may discover me dreaming I stay off a Nantucket coast, particularly through the summer time once I’m mendacity on a lower than pristine Texas seaside, curled up with an Elin Hilderbrand novel that I’m solely catching each different sentence of between a barking canine and delighted-to-be-at-the-beach-yet-also-because-of-this-screaming kids.
As I watched The Excellent Couple, I thought of my propensity to daydream about others’ seemingly good lives. Family and friends who know me properly know that it’s not tough to search out me misplaced in a ebook. Neither is it tough to search out me gazing at out-of-reach mansions on Zillow or scrolling by means of others’ untouchable lives on Instagram.
Their want for outward acceptance eclipses any actual effort to kind genuine bonds, whether or not with one another or with their household and mates.
The Excellent Couple provides viewers that uncommon permission to gawk and dream alike: it’s stuffed with lovely individuals main lovely lives. Viewers are provided a uncommon glimpse of a glitzy world most solely ever dream about. We’re given unfettered permission to stare as well-known novelist Greer Winbury, performed by the at all times beautiful Nicole Kidman and her charming, good-looking husband Tag (Liev Schrieber) plan a lush marriage ceremony by the ocean for his or her son Benji (Billy Howle) and his putting fiancée Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson).
The collection juxtaposes the 29-year-old marriage of “the proper couple,” Greer and Tag, with the one simply starting within the subsequent era, Benji and Amelia. Much like viewers like me, Amelia is an outsider to Nantucket tradition, and she or he wonders if she’ll ever slot in with this pristine household—and their fantasy life. Unsurprisingly, Greer doesn’t consider she is going to, however that doesn’t cease her daughter-in-law, or her mates, from making an attempt.
Amelia additionally wonders if it’s well worth the effort to even attempt to take action, even with all its seeming perks. Within the present’s starting, Amelia and her lovely mannequin maid-of-honor Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy) share selfies as they lounge poolside on the Winbury mansion, curating posts to encourage envy earlier than a marriage that’s undoubtedly being deliberate with each intention to perform simply that.
As additional working example, when the youngest Winbury son, Will (Sam Nivola), feels unhappy after a current breakup, Merritt playfully flirts with him and snaps a photograph with him, tagging him publicly on function. Merritt’s keenly conscious that her tanned, bikini-clad physique, and radiant smile set in opposition to the scenic ocean view and multi-million greenback house shall be simply the factor to cheer Will up and make his ex jealous. Importantly, the envy solely works if such a photograph is posted for the world to see. No genuine emotional connection happens between the 2.
In spite of everything, after all, Merritt’s tired of Will—even when the youngest Winbury shoots her longing appears to be like. The “good couple” and the radiant smile Will’s ex-girlfriend theoretically sees on-line is a sham, as are a lot of the “good” relationships the collection depicts. Image-perfect lives are all staged.
Quickly after this image is shared, audiences uncover Merrit has been having an affair with Will’s dad. Nothing is because it appears to the skin viewers of this household’s life.
The following day, Merritt is discovered lifeless, floating within the water by the Winbury’s home. Her finest good friend’s marriage ceremony is known as off, and everybody on the marriage ceremony occasion turns into marked as a possible prison. Or to place it Catholic phrases, they’re all marked as doubtlessly sinful. Whereas they might have appeared good on the skin, now it’s evident to the whole world that they don’t seem to be. As journalists swarm the home, the Winbury household and their circle’s sin is on show.
Greer, a romance novelist, has promoted her seemingly good life with Tag as a part of her model, crafting a picture of an idyllic marriage to spice up ebook gross sales. Nonetheless, the true situation of their relationship will not be Tag’s affair with Merritt nor even the violence that occurs at their property. What stands out as much more problematic within the present’s parameters is the couple’s mutual fixation on sustaining their prosperous, seemingly good Nantucket way of life on the expense of actual human connection. Their want for outward acceptance eclipses any actual effort to kind genuine bonds, whether or not with one another or with their household and mates.
Greer and Tag don’t appear to know if the opposite one has killed Merrit, or care: they solely wish to keep their surface-level happiness.
Whereas watching the present, I couldn’t assist however discover parallels between its portrayal of way of life advertising and marketing—by means of each ebook promotions and social media—and the regarding development of idealizing couple and household perfectionism to the purpose of idolizing couple and household perfectionism, a phenomenon I’ve noticed more and more inside church communities, together with my very own Catholic circle.
It’s releasing to keep in mind that God at all times sees beneath the floor, even after we people typically get tricked into solely skimming the highest, or scrolling the lies.
In one of many early scenes after we first see Greer and Tag alone, they’re enjoyable exterior their beautiful house, sharing a second that may learn to outsiders as at first intimate and loving. As a substitute, Greer makes use of this valuable time to mock their Nantucket neighbors, observing judgmentally, “Anybody who wears flip-flops exterior of the confines of their very own home must be arrested.”
Instantly, I used to be reminded of a narrative I noticed this summer time about applicable apparel at Mass, which mentioned “ladies who costume inappropriately” at church. Like Greer, the article talked about “flip-flops” particularly. I’m not saying that this can be a good comparability: the author doesn’t point out arrest, in any case! But I do fear a couple of prevailing sentiment that households must look and act a sure means or threat not being totally included in church life.
Catholics typically give attention to the concept of the “home church,” which emphasizes the distinctive name of holiness for Catholic {couples} and households. Vatican II doc Lumen Gentium describes it this manner:
The household is, so to talk, the home church. In it dad and mom ought to, by their phrase and instance, be the primary preachers of the religion to their kids; they need to encourage them within the vocation which is correct to every of them, fostering with particular care vocation to a sacred state.
What Lumen Gentium suggests is that Catholic {couples} and fogeys must construct genuine, loving relationships firstly with the Lord, after which springing from that, with one another.
What it doesn’t counsel is that Catholic {couples} and fogeys ought to put a common ban on carrying flip-flops to Mass. Or that they must police different {couples} and fogeys about what they are carrying to Mass.
The ending of The Excellent Couple leaves its predominant characters at a crossroads, together with Greer, its protagonist romance novelist. Greer “breaks up” the proper couple starring in her ebook collection, a pair supposedly primarily based on her relationship with Tag. This choice hints that maybe she’s able to face the imperfect fact of her personal marriage. It appears neither she nor Tag murdered Merritt, viewers and the couple uncover alike, but their refusal to attempt to unearth the reality in regards to the homicide collectively confirmed the evil beneath the floor of their outwardly lovely lives, and marriage.
First Samuel 16:7 reminds us, “The Lord doesn’t take a look at the issues individuals take a look at. Individuals take a look at the outward look, however the Lord appears to be like on the coronary heart.” In a tradition obsessive about good appearances, each within the tradition writ massive and (in my thoughts) extra sinisterly in church life, it’s releasing to keep in mind that God at all times sees beneath the floor, even after we people typically get tricked into solely skimming the highest, or scrolling the lies.
There isn’t a good couple, or human. For this, I’m grateful to God, who provides loving grace not for our polished appearances, however for our honest efforts to like each other, flaws and all.
Sure, even when these flaws embody my unhealthy kitchen dancing.
