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Anatomy of a Divorce: Midlife Crisis in Manhattan

2023-02-22T07:43:58.885Z


In this Disney+ series, Jesse Eisenberg plays a recently estranged surgeon. When his ex, Claire Danes, vanishes, begins for him a dizzying and lucid introspection on the frustrations of middle age.


Ordinary people trying to move forward step by step in their lives and make sense of their trajectory.

It's the simple promise for a much more complex introspection of

Anatomy of a Divorce

, the new series from Disney+.

Inspired by the best-selling novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, published in France under the title

Fleishman in Trouble,

this story is a lucid and bittersweet portrait of young forties New Yorkers plunged into the throes of the midlife crisis.

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Renowned Manhattan hepatologist surgeon Toby Fleishmann (Jesse Eisenberg,

Social Network

's genius Mark Zuckerberg ) has a happy divorce.

The one who has joint custody of two pre-teens finds on dating apps and among his sisters in the hospital a success that he had never managed to obtain during his youth.

However, the recklessness and the parade of dates prove to be short-lived.

His ex-wife, Rachel (Claire Danes,

Homeland

), famous agent on Broadway, vanishes and leaves the children on his hands.

To understand why Rachel committed such a radical act, Toby will have to examine the reasons for their separation.

In this introspective journey, he will be able to count on the feminine intuition of his college friend Libby (Lizzy Caplan), who is also struggling with a rampant malaise.

“How not to find oneself in their torments?

“, Underlines the actress, seen in

Masters of Sex.

“I don't know a person in that age bracket who doesn't feel right in the middle of life.

Suddenly, we wonder where our 20s have gone… Libby has an idyllic life on paper: a loving husband, healthy children, a house in a pretty green suburb.

However, she feels miserable and looks back to when she was a journalist and led an exciting and potential life in the Big Apple.

To age, to be alive, is to make more and more decisive choices which inevitably limit future options”

, notes Lizzy Caplan.


Inversion of perspectives

Almost invisible on the screen at the start of the series before becoming central in the second part, Libby is however omnipresent in the form of a voice-over which penetrates Toby's moods, auscultates the smallest recesses of his psyche.

But at the Fleishmans, Rachel's place should certainly not be neglected.

His point of view suddenly takes over in the final episodes.

A masterful and poignant storytelling twist.

“This series plays on our perceptions of gender roles and

pulls off a brilliant sleight of hand.

She adopts the point of view of the hero who has all our sympathy – he takes care of his kids and saves lives – and presents Claire as an ambitious and a bad mother before reversing the perspectives”, greets Jesse Eisenberg

.

“If you write a story of single women, they will read it.

If a man becomes the protagonist, everyone will open it.

These are prejudices so internalized that we do not pay attention to them.

It is a poison.

So many women, like Libby or Rachel, have exercised a profession where, by dint of not finding their place with their colleagues, they seek to do exactly as they do.

Except that this attitude does not put them in the right orbit, it does not give them the best tools to live a fulfilling family life. 

»


Lizzy Caplan and Jesse Eisenberg Disney+

Like

Normal People

, which detailed the intensity and pain of teenage first love, the

Anatomy of a Divorce

series elevates feelings.

Certainly less joyful and noble, such as doubts and frustrations, but with the same cathartic power.

What particularly pleases Lizzy Caplan:

“Fiction is reluctant to address our procrastination, our cowardice that make us human beings.

I love that our show normalizes those ruminations and growing old with all the contradictions that brings.

»

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2023-02-22

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