What’s your book about? A writer is asked. “Desire,” she says.
In one word, the webseries, Vladmir (on Netflix), could be said about desire. But it is also about many other things—ambition, envy, decaying marriage, politics in academia, obsession and regret.
Adapted by Julia May Jonas from her own 2022 novel, the series centres around an unnamed protagonist (Rachel Weisz), a popular professor of American literature. She is in her late forties, and gamely keeping her marriage to fellow academic, John (John Slatterly), going in spite of his womanising, because years ago, they had agreed to an open marriage. But, as characters say more than once, times were different. In the present. John, who habitually slept with his students, has been suspended and is facing a departmental inquiry. If they decide to terminate his job, he loses his pension. He is more concerned about that than the loss of his predatory hunting ground. Because she does not speak out against John, she finds she is being ‘cancelled’ too, by the post #MeToo female students and other openly hostile professors. Her gay daughter Sid (Ellen Robertson) is unpacking her own pack of woes, but loyally uses her law degree to support her feckless father.
She is facing these problems with equanimity, which is dented when a new professor joins the college. Vladimir (Leo Goodall) is devastatingly handsome, and surprisingly lacking in vanity. He is married to the troubled Cynthia (Jessica Henwick) and has a three-year-old daughter.
The protagonist immediately develops a massive crush on Vladimir and starts fantasising about him all the time, as she also breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the audience (like Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag). What prevents her from looking pathetic or desperate is that Weisz is gorgeous to look at and eminently desirable. She also adds a sense of mischief to the character, along with unabashed sex appeal.
The mutual attraction is obvious, the flirtation is quite steamy, still the two of them go through a dance of forbidden courtship, till she decides to throw caution to the winds and attempt a seduction.
In politically correct times, when women have fought to have their voices heard, there is a certain hypocrisy in society judging a woman or not letting a woman make her own choice about her marriage. Vladimir is wickedly funny, so the usual disapproval over an older woman acting on her desire has not crept in.
Around the mating dance of will-she-won’t-he, the film is visually stunning with warm fall colours, trendy costumes, beautiful homes and luscious libraries made for bookworms.
With short, less than 30-minute episodes, Vladimir is a binge-watch for the intellectually inclined—the discussions about literature built into the dialogue would make anyone reach out to those books lying forgotten on dusty shelves.
Vladimir
Created by Julia May Jonas
Cast: Rachel Weisz, Leo Woodall, John Slatterly, Ellen Robertson and others
On Netflix
