Review: Kline is outstanding in ‘Disclaimer’

Here’s the TV series event of the season. You watch “Disclaimer” on Apple TV+, thinking you’ve hit on some kind of miracle. And you have, such is the indelible impact delivered by two-time Oscar-winner Alfonso Cuaron (“Gravity,” “Roma”) as he directs a dream cast in a seven-part psychological thriller that brims over with suspense, sexual heat and shocking gravity.
The source material is a 2015 debut novel by Renée Knight that takes its time building a trap you won’t want to escape. You may think you’re one step ahead of the script written by Cuaron, who directed all seven episodes. But you’d be wrong. Cuaron never stops springing surprises.
Cate Blanchett is perfection as Catherine Ravenscroft, a documentary filmmaker who comes home to the posh London digs she shares with her priggish husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen going hard against Borat type). Having just received a prestigious award, Catherine is on a high.
Then ka-boom! What’s this novel, “The Perfect Stranger,” that mysteriously appears by her bedside? After reading a few pages, Catherine realizes the story is about her and the shameful secret she has kept for over 20 years. And the usual disclaimer has been altered to read: “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is NOT a coincidence.” Hooked? Of course, you are.
When Catherine learns a copy of the self-published tell-all has also been sent to her appliance salesman son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee)—a bitter disappointment to his snob parents—she sets out on a search for the book’s author who has ruined her career.
The hunt for answers leads Catherine to grizzled and embittered retired professor Stephen Brigstock, also played hard against type by the usually dashing Kevin Kline, who is Emmy-worthy outstanding as a Dickensian codger hiding behind the mask of old age that makes him invisible.
It turns out that the book is really written by Stephen’s late wife Nancy (Lesley Manville outdoing her usual magnificence) as revenge against Catherine for seducing her son, Jonathan (Jonathan Partridge), who accidentally died trying to save Catherine’s young son from drowning.
End of story? Not by a longshot. The film is filled with unreliable flashbacks from alternate points of view that hide the truth as often as reveal it. Cuaron teases us with clues that lead nowhere, especially in erotic flashbacks that show the young Catherine, played with white-heat eroticism by the sensational Leila George whose scenes with Partridge singe the screen.
But nothing in “Disclaimer” is what it seems. No spoilers, except to heed Catherine’s first words when she accept her award: “Beware of narrative and form. Their power can bring us closer to the truth. But they can also be a weapon with a great power to manipulate.”
I’ll say. “Disclaimer” has been dazzlingly acted, written, directed and edited as a collection of puzzle pieces that only interlock when Cuaron is ready to lower the boom. And the beauty of the images, shot with a poet’s eye by Emmanuel Lubezki (“Birdman”) and Bruno Delbonnel (“Amélie”), can dazzle and distract with a wicked skill that borders on dark magic.
OK, you can dunk on “Disclaimer” for its plot holes and an ending that feels rushed and unconvincing after the resonant precision of everything that came before. Still, Cuaron’s visionary daring creates a world to get lost in and a map to find a way to understanding as it raises the bar on what TV can do when its firing on all creative cylinders.