Big Little Lies

Moving is so stressful, like unbelievably stressful.

Part of me is so excited and loving packing my life into boxes and then unpacking in a brand new room. But the other part of me is terrified. Change is the worst, but also the best. Does that make sense?

I don't know. Anyway, last weekend I binge watched all 7 episodes of Big Little Lies because, well, why the hell not? I'd heard it was good and so I watched it all, in one go. Whoops.

Minor spoilers ahead.

With an all star cast and a murder mystery to be unravelled, what was not to love?

Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Shailene Woodley are all fantastic in their roles as women with complicated lives. Madeline (Witherspoon) is your typical Queen Bee, rich and perfect, except she's been having an affair and her marriage is falling apart. Celeste (Kidman) is the beautiful, top shot ex-layer, with a doting husband and lovely twin boys, except her husband occasionally beats her. And Jane (Woodley) is an outcast running from a past she can't escape, new to town with accusations beginning to escalate.

Corr, the way the three of their storylines are so neatly interwoven with each other and with the interrogation scenes is wonderful. You literally don't know who has been murdered until the penultimate scene in the last episode. It all mounts more and more and more until realisation comes crashing down and you understand how it's all tied together. It's brilliant.

I have to mention Alexander Skarsgard as Perry, Celeste's abusive husband. He has a real knack for these kind of roles and I think he played the part perfectly. Santiago Cabrera as Joseph, Madeline's secret lover, also did a great job. It's so strange to go from watching Skarsgard in True Blood and Cabrera in The Musketeers to something like this, so normal but exciting because their characters are new and different from their previous ones. Laura Durn was also very passionate and kind of an irritating character but with good reason.

The only thing I was a little disappointed with was who was actually murdered. I felt that there were two individuals who it would have been pretty obvious to choose to murder and one of them was, in fact, the one that was murdered so it wasn't very shocking. It was good though how the events leading up to the murder unravelled. I literally did not see one of the revelations coming at all. It was such a good twist!!

I feel like I may have stumbled across a slight plot hole though, in the fact that when all of the protagonists are coming together in the murder scene, Joseph goes off to the 'bathroom' right after Madeline storms off - I presumed he was going after her yet he never appears again which I found a little odd.

Oh well, it was well worth the watch. The cinematography and the music were beautiful, the story gripping and the acting phenomenal.



✽