Seconds before the American tourists disembark, the manager of the five-star White Lotus hotel, Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), sets fire to her team who had the misfortune of bringing a tray too small for the number of flutes of prosecco needed. . A moment later and here is the same Valentina affecting an obsequious smile to welcome her guests.
Broadcast in France on OCS since October 31 (the day after its broadcast on the American channel HBO), the second season of The White Lotus takes up the same principle as the first part: crunching the rich during a vacation that ends in a murder, of which the spectator is unaware at the start of both the victim and the perpetrator. But she left Hawaii for Sicily.
The tribulations of the characters (two couples who have everything to hate each other under their facade friendship, a family of Italian descent come to return to their roots, a local sex worker…) are interspersed with postcard shots, explains The Hollywood Reporter. While going further than the vineyards, villas and hamlets. “Firstly, The White Lotus does everything to highlight the breathtaking beauty of this island”, continues the Californian magazine, and, on the other hand, she takes great care to explain that Sicily is the mythical place where Hades raped Persephone. A place where romanticism and violence, physical and emotional, coexist.”
A casting always at the rendezvous
If the formula works again, it is thanks in particular to the finely written roles. The weekly, widely read by Hollywood professionals, applauds series creator Mike White for his “ability to design characters whose point of view the viewer completely understands, even when it is painful and they are in no way likable”. Crowned with an Emmy for her participation in the previous season, Jennifer Coolidge is almost the only one to reprise her role, that of Tanya, a woman as rich as she is lost. Among the newcomers, we discover F. Murray Abraham as a clumsy grandfather (Bert) and Theo James as a braggart young entrepreneur (Cameron). “Aubrey Plaza” [vue dans Parks and Recreation] particularly stands out among a strong cast.”
“We are both laughing and ill at ease in front of the tongue-in-cheek humor that is specific to her and that she deploys to embody a woman [Harper] whose implacable judgments poorly conceal his own weaknesses.”
Change of theme
While the production should not, at the start, have a sequel, this new season is an opportunity to slightly shift the focus, believes the magazine. If the division between social classes was at the heart of the previous part and that questions of gender and sexuality were in the background, it is now the opposite. However, it sometimes becomes difficult to “distinguish between the villains and the victims”, which results in episodes “with less acid humor, less sharp satire, despite Cameron’s tendency to blather on alpha male nonsense or Bert’s tendency to unscrupulously flirt with any woman he meets”.
However, despite a few inopportune fart jokes, the subtlety is not lacking in the whole. “Fortunately this season shows great lucidity and a real sense of empathy. […] The White Lotus in no way seeks to essentialize men and women, to reduce them to notions of predator or prey, subject or object, white knight or damsel in distress.”
In short, a successful bet, even losing the surprise effect of the first season, concludes The Hollywood Reporter.
“If the new season is not quite as incisive as the first, it does not offer less the luxury of a few observations sharp enough to cut in the quick.”