5 star hotel, 5 star series

No boboche intro or hotel-flavored gag to break the ice in the glass of Aperol Spritz: the second season of The White Lotuswhich comes on Sunday on Crave, in French and in English, gets an almost perfect rating on TripAdvisor.

Posted at 8:15 a.m.

Well-done (threesome) cleaning, discretion about indiscretions and ultra-professional staff — in every sense of the word — I loved my stay in this chic establishment with discreet, not flashy luxury.

In fact, I swallowed in one go the five episodes (out of a total of seven) that were provided to me by the production. Ciao, friend! Thank you! Prego!

It’s funny, gritty, uncomfortable, and witty all at once. Bonus: there is still a death to be elucidated against the background of the existential crisis of hyper-rich customers, the 1% of the planet, but little inclined to introspection.

The second installment leaves Hawaii and teleports to another The White Lotus chain establishment in Taormina, Sicily. That’s wonderful. The shimmering Ionian Sea, the volcanic vineyards, the retro blue and white parasols, the gleaming marble, the prosecco sparkling in the cups, the candy pop music of Raffaella Carrà, the backfire of the Vespas, this is smart and entertaining, at a low price.

And I googled everything to save you having to: the American miniseries was filmed at the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace in Taormina, which was housed in a former convent of the XVe century with a view of Etna. The cost ? Over $1500 a night, which does not include buffet lunch or airfare. That’s a lot of UNICEF piggy banks to empty.

Returning to our privileged travelers, they have the same hotel experience as their comrades in the first Hawaiian incarnation. The series begins again with the end: the corpse of a customer floats in the blue sea. The hotel staff had a great time: there would not be a single death, but several deaths to report. Whoops.

The plot then moves back a week and shows us the arrival, still by boat, of American tourists whom we will follow for seven days. Day one, episode one, day two, episode two, and so on.

Two couples in their late thirties were screwed at the heart of this Italian divorce. the nerd Shy Ethan (Will Sharpe) and snappy Harper (Aubrey Plaza) play the typical progressive middle-class couple, giving to charities, watching the news and reading the New Yorkergender.

Ethan made his fortune in techno, Harper works as a labor lawyer. They share a connecting room with Cameron (Theo James), a bro banker whom Ethan knew at university, and his perfect wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy, the revelation of the series).

At the first supper, the tension rises between the four “friends” who know each other very little. The first couple, childless, is wary of the second who loves each other too much, who demonstrates it too much, who has too many fun and who turns a blind eye to mutual pranks, let’s say. The more the story progresses, the more the quartet challenges itself and tests its limits, always a glass of wine away from slipping.

Also on the radar is the Di Grasso family, made up of Stanford-educated son (Adam DiMarco), Hollywood producer father (Michael Imperioli, aka Christopher in The Sopranos) and the seductive grandfather (F. Murray Abraham). Here again, the clash of generations hits hard, generation Z against baby boomers.

The younger Di Grasso, well versed in consent and patriarchy, resents his fickle father, who also resents his own swinger father. The seriousness of the reproaches, which splash as much son as dad and grandpa, climbs with each of their meals, and it is tasty.

The only surviving character of the first chapter is the completely skipped heiress Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), still married to Greg (Jon Gries), met at the White Lotus in Hawaii. Poor Tanya and her sad wine. All the gold of men will never absorb his pain of living. In the meantime, it’s her assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) who pays the price for Tanya’s deep unhappiness.

Unlike the first season, The White Lotus 2 shows little interest in the hotel employees, other than the manager of the neo-classical establishment, Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), a brittle woman who carries a big secret. A local prostitute (Simona Tabasco) and her pianist friend (Beatrice Granno) will add a lot of spice to the rather acid trip of our favorite summer visitors.

The White Lotus depicts unhappy, egocentric, unreasonable, bad-tempered and disconnected people, to whom we end up becoming attached. They are not pitiable in their Prada outfits or their Versace silk shirts. Jealousy eats them away, they encourage unhealthy power dynamics and sex, the main fuel of The White Lotus 2pushes them to the edge of the cliff.

We are here in an elegantly stitched tragicomedy. The scene where the grieving Tanya attends a performance of Madame Butterfly, in the fifth episode, is not insignificant. As in Puccini’s opera, the story told in The White Lotus 2 is a story of death, betrayal and despair, draped in elegant costumes.


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