canal + series – Thursday April 16 at 9 p.m. – miniseries
For her first series, Cate Blanchett did not choose the easy way. Nicole Kidman had reserved a role of magnificent victim (Big Little Lies), Amy Adams was ugly to play with ambiguity (Sharp Objects). With Mrs America, the Australian actress prefers to capture an indefensible character, Phyllis Schlafly.
Almost unknown in France (when she died in 2016, at age 92, she was not entitled to an obituary in the columns of the World), this American conservative activist weighed heavily on the fate of her country, succeeding in preventing the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a text that would have enshrined gender equality in the Constitution of the United States.
First of all, we must not get carried away by the flood of information poured out by the script of the creator of the series, the Canadian Dahvi Waller.
The portrait of this brilliant and energetic woman, who put her formidable organizational skills at the service of a cause precisely intended to prevent women from making their talents grow, takes a few episodes to take shape before finally asserting herself with a force that does not prevent the nuance. First of all, we must not get carried away by the flood of information poured out by the scenario of the creator of the series, the Canadian Dahvi Waller.
We are at the very beginning of the 1970s. Richard Nixon is in the White House, but the Democrats retain control of Congress. The Vietnam War never ends, but the great pacifist battles are over. The feminist movement is powerful enough for the two major American parties to agree to vote for the ERA, with states ratifying it.
Ambiguous course
In her suburb of Chicago, Illinois, Phyllis Schlafly, mother of six, wife of a lawyer who seems to have invented paternalism (John Slattery, as unattractive as he was handsome in Mad Men) and visceral anti-communist, leads as best it can the fight of its entire existence, the fight against the Soviet nuclear threat. Until she understands that the fight against feminism and ERA will give her a royal road to what remains one of the essential components of the American dream, fame.
What initially appeared to be a portrait gallery eventually crystallized into a rich, in-depth reflection on the reasons for a defeat.
To this ambiguous course, on which Cate Blanchett advances with a mixture of majesty, pettiness and ultimately frightening blindness, responds a meticulous description of the feminist movement of the time.
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