But by the middle of its 12 half-hour episodes, it’s hard not to wish someone would. The tension gives Conversations With Friends a brittle quality, like it might break if it’s pushed too hard. At the same time, they shrink from the challenge of saying what’s really in their hearts, in the moments it matters most. All four leads wrestle with the same irony: They’re creatives devoted to the art of self-expression, happy to pour their ideas into words or explode with feeling onstage or simply debate over drinks for hours. To some extent, the remoteness is by design. As their friendship cools, so does the series. For long stretches of time, though, Frances and Bobbi’s relationship is defined by the distance between them - which only grows as the pair continue to spend copious amounts of time together and exchange flurries of emails, but bite back the hurt or anger they can’t quite bring themselves to articulate. It doesn’t help that the baby-faced Alwyn reads as slightly too young for the role of Nick, thus blunting what in the book comes across as the thrilling appeal of a more experienced and worldly lover.īetter together are Oliver and Lane, especially when Conversations With Friends is able to dive into the longstanding well of love between their characters. There’s a touch of tenderness between them, but little of the desperation needed to propel their story forward. While Frances’ attraction to Nick may not have the same stirring sense of romance, it’s still a connection that we’re meant to understand consumes her to the extent that, as she admits to him at one point, “I don’t think I thought about reality or consequences.”īut Oliver and Alwyn generate only mild friction together, even when their unclothed bodies are writhing against each other to gentle soundtracks in soft sunlight. In the similarly understated Normal People, Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal) felt drawn together by a force so magnetic it seemed inevitable. If Conversations With Friends excels at capturing the finer details of their interactions, however, it’s somewhat less convincing at conveying the warmth or heat coursing underneath them. And it notes the way other characters note these, which is often with an air of stubborn nonchalance. It notes the glint of Nick’s wedding ring as he runs his hand through his hair, or Frances’ self-conscious impulse to fix a spaghetti strap when Nick addresses her in front of Melissa. The camera rarely feels intrusive, but it also misses nothing. His mutual infatuation with Frances soon evolves into a full-fledged affair that forces her to reconsider her relationships with the world around her, but also with herself.Ĭonversations With Friends is frequently lovely to look at, in a measured way that reflects the way the characters look at one another - intently, while trying to seem casual. This time it’s Frances, a Dublin college student of modest temperament and modest means who spends her free time performing feminist spoken-word poetry with Bobbi (Sasha Lane), her more extroverted and free-spirited ex-girlfriend-turned-best-friend.Īt one of their performances, the girls meet and befriend Melissa ( Girls‘ Jemima Kirke, perfectly cast), a 30something writer of some renown, and soon become enmeshed in her older, posher social circle - which includes Melissa’s handsome actor husband Nick ( Joe Alwyn). But it too often tilts toward the same sense of reserve that its heroine does, resulting in a series that’s elegant and sensitive, but perhaps too cool for its own good.Ĭast: Alison Oliver, Sasha Lane, Joe Alwyn, Jemima KirkeĮxecutive producers: Ed Guiney, Emma Norton, Andrew Lowe, Lenny Abrahamson, Tommy Bulfin, Rose GarnettĮngineered by the same team that delivered Hulu’s 2020 hit Normal People, including director Lenny Abrahamson, screenwriter Alice Birch and source material author Sally Rooney, Conversations With Friends follows another bookish, withdrawn young woman through a life-changing romance. Conversations With Friends charts Frances’ halting journey toward bridging the disconnect between theory and practice, head and heart, with patience and a perceptive eye for detail. “It’s not real crying,” she insists while wiping away her tears.īut as the weeping suggests, she has great reservoirs of feeling buried away, unacknowledged and unprocessed, and they tend to spring leaks in inconvenient, unpredictable, sometimes destructive ways. Even when she cries during sex, she shrugs it off as a meaningless physical reaction. We know this because we can see how she guards her expressions, holds her tongue, deflects well-meaning questions with stoic indifference - but also because she keeps telling people that she isn’t, and being told by them that she isn’t. Frances (Alison Oliver), the protagonist of Conversations With Friends, is not the emotional type.
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