We will all converge on it – Newspaper Kommersant No. 205 (7406) dated 11/07/2022

HBO TV channel (in Russia – in the Amediateka online cinema) continues to show the second season of the White Lotus series by Mike White. Julia Shagelman found the resort adventures of the new group of characters no less entertaining than the adventures of their predecessors.

Planned as a six-episode mini-series, White Lotus premiered on HBO in the summer of 2021 and became an immediate favorite with critics and viewers. The former marveled at the clever way writer-director Mike White packaged a vitriolic social satire into the glossy cover of a sealed detective story set in a posh hotel in Hawaii. The latter enjoyed great views, witty dialogue and excellent acting, as well as the pleasant knowledge that the rich also cry – where else to watch it, if not on TV. All this secured The White Lotus the top five most popular HBO series, twenty Emmy Award nominations, of which it won ten, including the main in its category – the best miniseries, and an order for a sequel. So the White Lotus Hotel turned into a network with branches in different countries, and the series itself turned into an anthology: the second season is built according to the same scheme as the previous one, but with different characters.

This time, Sicily has become a luxurious backdrop for their personal dramas of various calibers. In the screensaver, to the elusive ernic music of Cristobal Tapia de Veer, not tropical plants and animals come to life, but characters from baroque frescoes. But, as before, in an innocent at first glance, the picture hides the incarnations of human vices, which, of course, will echo the events of the series. The season, according to good tradition, begins with the discovery of a dead body (whose – will remain a mystery until the finale). However, White raises the stakes: before the manager of the local White Lotus, Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), can conclude with relief that since the body was found at sea, the hotel is not responsible for it, it turns out that several other people from among the guests have died. After that, the action jumps back a week, when the next guests arrive at the White Lotus.

Among them is a familiar face – Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), who is just as obscenely rich, neurotic and absurdly self-centered as in the first season. She arrives in Sicily with her husband (John Gries), whom she met last season (now in trouble in their personal paradise), as well as with assistant Portia (Haley Lou Richardson). She is very similar to her employer in the ability to feel unhappy in any circumstances, as well as phenomenal blindness and deafness to others.

Two more American companies are in the spotlight. The first consists of two young, attractive and wealthy married couples: newly millionaire IT guy Ethan (Will Sharp) with his lawyer wife Harper (Aubrey Plaza) and fellow college investor Cameron (Theo James) with housewife wife Daphne (Megan Fahey). . Harper, who reads thick smart books and stays up at night because of the injustice reigning in the world, despises Cameron and Daphne, this couple of empty-headed big boys who don’t go to the polls and don’t watch the news. But the tension in the by no means equilateral quadrangle is connected not only with this: rivalry and envy, sexual attraction and indifference, old grievances that have reached a new level, lies and cruel truth are mixed here.

The second company is three generations of men from the Di Grasso family who came to Sicily in search of their roots. 80-year-old Bert (F. Murray Abraham), a fragment of the former politically incorrect times, despite his physical infirmity, shamelessly flirts with all female creatures that cross his path, which makes Albie’s grandson (Adam Di Marco), a feminist and advocate of gender, blush. equality. Dominic (Michael Imperioli), son of Bert and father of Albi, has his own problems: he is trying to save his marriage, which fell apart due to his own infidelities, but good intentions crackle under the pressure of his sexual addiction. Needless to say, that in the course of action between the three Di Grasso will be much more in common than the youngest of them would like to admit?

If in the first season White revealed the class and racial contradictions of modern America, then in the second, like Sasha Cherny, the problem of gender came up. Now the main theme is sex, the one that people have and lack, which they sell and buy, which becomes a means to hide from problems and a source of new ones. All characters are connected by two local sex workers: experienced Lucia (Simone Tabasco) and aspiring Mia (Beatrice Granno), launching a complex tangle of cross storylines. Perhaps because of this shift in perspective, the series lost some of its edge and moved dangerously close to soap opera territory. However, as the same poet noted, “there is no topic more accessible”, so that time watching the new episodes of the White Lotus can be spent no less “pleasantly, ideologically and entertainingly” than a year ago.