Spoiler Alert: This text accommodates spoilers for The Excellent Couple.
The Excellent Couple offers viewers that uncommon permission to gawk and dream alike: it’s crammed with lovely folks 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, medicine, intercourse, and Botox at my beck and name. With that mentioned, Netflix’s homicide thriller, The Excellent Couple, resonated with me—a slightly middling Catholic spouse and mom who’s more likely to be consuming an excessive amount of popcorn and bingeing Netflix exhibits on a Saturday evening than dancing fabulously in a cocktail gown with my buddies to Megan Trainor’s Criminals like we see in that wonderful opening credit of the smash-hit sequence.
OK, full honesty right here: typically you may discover me in my kitchen pretending to bop like this. Generally, too, you may discover me dreaming I stay off a Nantucket coast, particularly throughout the summer time once I’m mendacity on a lower than pristine Texas seashore, 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 considered my propensity to daydream about others’ seemingly excellent lives. Family and friends who know me nicely know that it’s not tough to search out me misplaced in a guide. Neither is it tough to search out me gazing at out-of-reach mansions on Zillow or scrolling by way of others’ untouchable lives on Instagram.
Their want for outward acceptance eclipses any actual effort to type genuine bonds, whether or not with one another or with their household and buddies.
The Excellent Couple offers viewers that uncommon permission to gawk and dream alike: it’s crammed with lovely folks 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 all the time gorgeous Nicole Kidman and her charming, good-looking husband Tag (Liev Schrieber) plan a lush wedding ceremony by the ocean for his or her son Benji (Billy Howle) and his putting fiancée Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson).
The sequence 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 he or she wonders if she’ll ever slot in with this pristine household—and their fantasy life. Unsurprisingly, Greer doesn’t imagine she’s going to, however that doesn’t cease her daughter-in-law, or her buddies, 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 living proof, 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 objective. Merritt’s keenly conscious that her tanned, bikini-clad physique, and radiant smile set towards the scenic ocean view and multi-million greenback dwelling 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 any case, after all, Merritt’s tired of Will—even when the youngest Winbury shoots her longing appears. The “excellent couple” and the radiant smile Will’s ex-girlfriend theoretically sees on-line is a sham, as are a lot of the “excellent” relationships the sequence 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 subsequent day, Merritt is discovered useless, floating within the water by the Winbury’s home. Her finest pal’s wedding ceremony known as off, and everybody on the wedding ceremony social gathering turns into marked as a possible prison. Or to place it Catholic phrases, they’re all marked as probably sinful. Whereas they might have appeared excellent on the skin, now it’s evident to your complete world that they aren’t. As journalists swarm the home, the Winbury household and their circle’s sin is on show.
Greer, a romance novelist, has promoted her seemingly excellent life with Tag as a part of her model, crafting a picture of an idyllic marriage to spice up guide gross sales. Nevertheless, the actual difficulty 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 excellent Nantucket way of life on the expense of actual human connection. Their want for outward acceptance eclipses any actual effort to type genuine bonds, whether or not with one another or with their household and buddies.
Greer and Tag don’t appear to know if the opposite one has killed Merrit, or care: they solely wish to preserve their surface-level happiness.
Whereas watching the present, I couldn’t assist however discover parallels between its portrayal of way of life advertising—by way of each guide promotions and social media—and the regarding pattern 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 liberating to keep in mind that God all the time sees beneath the floor, even once we people usually get tricked into solely skimming the highest, or scrolling the lies.
In one of many early scenes once we first see Greer and Tag alone, they’re stress-free outdoors their beautiful dwelling, sharing a second that may learn to outsiders as at first intimate and loving. As an alternative, Greer makes use of this valuable time to mock their Nantucket neighbors, observing judgmentally, “Anybody who wears flip-flops outdoors of the confines of their very own home ought to be arrested.”
Instantly, I used to be reminded of a narrative I noticed this summer time about acceptable apparel at Mass, which mentioned “girls who gown inappropriately” at church. Like Greer, the article talked about “flip-flops” particularly. I’m not saying that it is a excellent comparability: the author doesn’t point out arrest, in any case! But I do fear a few prevailing sentiment that households must look and act a sure method or danger not being totally included in church life.
Catholics usually 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 mother and father 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 at the beginning with the Lord, after which springing from that, with one another.
What it doesn’t counsel is that Catholic {couples} and fogeys ought to position 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 essential characters at a crossroads, together with Greer, its protagonist romance novelist. Greer “breaks up” the proper couple starring in her guide sequence, a pair supposedly based mostly on her relationship with Tag. This resolution hints that maybe she’s able to face the imperfect reality 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 folks take a look at. Individuals take a look at the outward look, however the Lord appears on the coronary heart.” In a tradition obsessive about excellent appearances, each within the tradition writ massive and (in my thoughts) extra sinisterly in church life, it’s liberating to keep in mind that God all the time sees beneath the floor, even once we people usually get tricked into solely skimming the highest, or scrolling the lies.
There isn’t a excellent couple, or human. For this, I’m grateful to God, who gives 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.
