From the Opening Moments of the New Disney+ Series the Stoen Girl, You COULD Be Forgiveen for Thinking that You’ve Happy Upon A Scandi-NOIR CRIME DRAMA.
From the Air, We Follow a Dark Volvo Estate Driving A Dusty Road Throw A Tree-Lined Mountainous Landscape. The Palette is cool and desatuated, the music undibinned by a Distorted Electronic Buzz. After the Sound of A Zip, Light Picks Out the Face of a Child who Seems to Have Been Transported in the Cramped and Claustrophobic Boot of the Volvo, that emblem of (scandinavian) Family Road Safety. “Who are you?” The child asks.
Unlike SCANDI-NIIR, Howver, There is no elevated Title Sequence and the Five-Episode Thriller is Set Between the North of England and the South of France. We cut to the latter rapidly, to a brightly lait Balcony, from which Elisa Blix (Denise Gough), Private Jet Flight Crew and the Mother of the Eponymous Girl, Looks out at the Côte d’Azur.
In the first episode, elisa and her huzand, criminal lawyer Fred (Jim Stuget) Realise that their Eldest Child, LUCIA, Has Been Kidnapted While on A Hastily Arranged Sleepver at a new School Friend’s House.
Looking for Something Good? Cut Through The Noise With A Carefully Curled Selection of the Latest Releases, Live Events and Exhibitions, Straight to your inbox Every Fortnight, on Friday. Sign Up HERE.
A number of stylistic motifs controlte to the Sense of Unease Whiche Pervades the Stallen Girl. The Camera Peers Around Corners Into Dark, Claustrophobic Spaces. It Creeps Along In the Opening Sequence, for Example, It Drifts Through Lush, Dark Foliage Towars Stone Steps, Offering a Glimpse of a Doorway at their Apex.
The Significance of this Repeated Shot doesn’t Similaryly, motifs from the elaborase décor of the blixes’ “Perfect” home are disturbingly echoed later in the Setting of the French Villa. As the Drama Proceds, Flashbacks and Memories Provide the Opportunity to Reasses and Reinterpret, for the Characters and the Viewer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heyichzjqo
The Stoen Girl is meticulously consced to unatettle and intrigue the viewer, from Sound Design and Imagery to Narrative Organisation.
For the Most Part, We Discover and Interpret Clues Along with Another Main Character – Doggedly Persistment Journalist Selma Desai (Ambika Mod). HER GrasP of Social Media and Pop Psychology Leads Her to Solve the Case ahead of the Detectives Working It.
I Reversals and Twists, Keeps US Guessing Until New The Vry End. It’s Clever, and Satisfying for the Attentive Viewer As the While-Series Release in the UK Makes It Easily Bingeable and Easy to Pick up also.
The series was adapted for television by Catterine Moulton from Alex Dahl’s 2020 Novel Playdate. It centers on Two Mothers and a Female Journalist, with a Young Female Victim at the Center. This makes it a fascinating compancy piece to the much-disscussed procedure Netflix Drama Adoleslen, which has been ben critiqued for its Focus on the Young Male Perpetrator and HIS FAMILY.
Read More: Adoleslen in Schools: TV Show’s Portrayal of One BoyHood May Do More Harm Than Good when as a
Matt Squire/Disney+
There are very cleares to the Madigine McCann Case in the Stallen Girl. Not Just in the Similarly posed “Victim Id” Photo of Lucia, but also in the person station BALME Directed at her Mother Elisa. Descrabed as a “Jet-Set Mum-Fluencer”, Her Decision in a Harried Moment Between Work and Home Fachelitated the Abduction of Her Daughter. “She spent Half Her Childhood with me who you was up in the Air”, Claims Her Mother-IN-LAW.
The Drama Unfolds and the Mystery is Reveled Through A Highly Screen-Literate Pastiche of Gothic, Noir and Horror Trops. Center Characters are Narrated Through The Mise-E-SCène of the Stallen Girl is Simultaneously Presented as Asipiriational (I Spotted A Number of WELL-KNOWN FANCY BRANDS) façade, as the perfect life of the White Middle-Class Family at the series’ center is systematicly unpicked.
As Unravels, a nexus of trauma, infidelity, financeial insecction, lies and Secrets are Reveled. Like Adoleslen, The Programme Identifies Social Media AS A Factor in Facilitating CRIME, but also, Through Selma, As an Instrument of Solving It.
