Sharp Objects: An Unforgettable Thriller Starring Amy Adams and Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée on HBO Max

An unforgettable thriller starring Amy Adams and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée. (HBO Max)

Gillian Flynn is a writer who used much of her experience as an entertainment journalist to put her fictional stories on paper. Her charm also lies in how she builds her female characters, from her deepest motivations to the traumas that led them to follow a certain path (Lost is one of her most representative works). In 2018, HBO adapted another of her books, Sharp Objects, into an eight-episode series starring Amy Adams and directed by the late filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée (Big Little Lies). Here, Flynn takes a bit of her professional background and her love of the crime genre to create Camille Preaker, a Chicago reporter who must return to her hometown to investigate a murder.

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Camille (Adams) is a woman with a mysterious past, but it’s clear from the first episode that she isn’t one bit homesick for Wind Gap, Missouri. Despite her complaints, the editor of the newspaper she works for sees a unique opportunity for her to do this coverage: she grew up in this small town and therefore knows everyone who lives there. The teenager Ann Nash was strangled, and her body is found by the authorities nearby in the woods, a mystery like any other that marks a starting point in fictions of this type.

The charm of the female characters in the works of Gillian Flynn is repeated in “Sharp Objects”. (HBO Max)

However, it is the environment of the protagonist that causes more intrigue than the crime itself. Seeing her mother again, the elegant Adora Crellin (Patricia Clarkson), revives an emotional injury that also affects her own body. Camille has a psychological trauma that leads her to self-harm in stressful situations, and in this case, the presence of her parent triggers a trauma that will take several chapters to explain.

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The scenes of Amy Adams, a career artist with six Oscar nominations, are interspersed with those of a teenager Sophia Lillis, who had already achieved strong notoriety for the movie It (2017). The flashbacks intersect with the present, making closer the space that separates that innocent and energetic Camille with the adult version of her who still maintains childish behaviors. Returning home, she is again reduced to her mother figure and doesn’t fight her whims much, despite now having the power to do so.

Camille Preaker, a reporter with a mysterious past at Wind Gap. (HBO Max)

The direction of Jean-Marc Vallée —also nominated for an Oscar for The Homeless Club— represents the brilliant performance of Sharp Objects in television format. The visual aesthetic used by the director makes the most of Flynn’s text, to the point of making the series much more enjoyable thanks to this cinematographic style that mounts takes of a few seconds one after the other to raise the atmosphere of tension and suspense. In turn, he accompanies them with closed shots to highlight certain very powerful elements such as Camille’s wounds.

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Another attraction of this production is that it featured notable stars who were still in their first steps in acting: the aforementioned Sophia Lillis and actresses Eliza Scanlen (Little Women) and Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria). It is also worth noting the role of Chris Messina as detective Richard Willis, who works as a counterpart in the process that Camille lives throughout history; in addition to provoking in her that sexual desire at a mature age.

The cinematic suspense that accompanies the television adaptation of “Sharp Objects.” (HBO Max)

All eight episodes of Sharp Objects can be seen on the HBO Max catalog.

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2023-07-28 15:21:59
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