Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram lead parallel lives in this thriller about race and gender in 1960s Baltimore.
Plot: When the disappearance of a young girl grips the city of Baltimore on Thanksgiving 1966, the lives of two women converge on a fatal collision course. Maddie Schwartz, a Jewish housewife seeking to shed a secret past and reinvent herself as an investigative journalist, and Cleo Johnson, a mother navigating the political underbelly of Black Baltimore while struggling to provide for her family. Their disparate lives seem parallel at first, but when Maddie becomes fixated on Cleo’s mystifying death, a chasm opens that puts everyone around them in danger.
Review: Cultural divides and parallels have always been fascinating material for dramatic series. The similarities between Jewish and Black communities are far more than many realize, as both groups have been subjugated over the years. By contrasting two very different journeys for the main characters in Lady in the Lake, Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram chronicle the countless similarities the two protagonists face within and outside their societal borders. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, Lady in the Lake is a slow burn that is less mysterious and more commentary on the burgeoning rights of women and minorities during the Powderkeg era of the 1960s. While not always as interesting as it thinks it is, this series boasts strong performances from Portman and Ingram that more than make up for the inconsistent pacing.
Based on the novel by Laura Lippman, Lady in the Lake opens with the kidnapping and murder of a young Jewish girl in Baltimore. The child becomes a focus for housewife Maddie Schwartz (Natalie Portman), a former journalist who feels stuck in a listless marriage of convenience. As Maddie contends with her daily malaise in the affluent suburb of Pikesville, Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram) strives to make a life for her children while working as a department store window model by day and accountant for criminal Shell Gordon (Wood Harris) by night. While Maddie and Cleo unknowingly cross paths, it is when Cleo’s dead body is discovered and becomes known as the Lady in the Lake that Maddie’s interest in the woman deepens. The overlap between the two women’s lives converges and deviates in ways that blend the child murder and the death of Cleo in a way that forces Maddie to reflect on her own decisions and life choices.
Told over seven episodes, Lady in the Lake is fascinating and frustrating. As much as it delves into the Black culture of the 1960s, the series is heavily focused on the Jewish community in the Maryland suburb. Much of Maddie’s life led as an affluent Jewish college student turned wife is analyzed through her marriage to Milton (Brett Gelman), her relationship with her son Seth (Noah Jupe), and her former romance with Allan Durst (David Corenswet), the father of the murdered child. Maddie also develops a friendship with police officer Ferdie Platt (Y’lan Noel) and reporter Bob Bauer (Pruitt Taylor Vince), which push Maddie’s journalistic instincts towards both Cleo’s case and the accused child murderer Stephan Zawadzkie (Dyland Arnold) and his mother (Masha Mashkova). With Natalie Portman in the role, I expected more from the Oscar-winning actress, but Portman seems to be floating through this series carried by the narrative’s momentum rather than a driving force in the story.
The real star of this series is Moses Ingram. After a breakout role in The Queen’s Gambit and a high-profile turn in Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ingram steals every scene she is in of Lady in the Lake. Ingram has a presence and energy that propels this story, including Natalie Portman’s Maddie, as she lives vicariously through Cleo’s tale. Moses Ingram holds her own opposite the Oscar-winning Portman. He works exceptionally well with co-stars Byron Bowers, who plays Cleo’s husband, Slappy Johnson, Wood Harris as Shell Gordon, and Tyrik Johnson as her son Teddy. Ingram shares some emotionally gut-wrenching scenes with Jennifer Mogbock as Dora Carter and Josiah Cross as Reggie Robinson. The subplot involving Dora and Reggie and how it connects to Cleo is mesmerizing, but it feels forced to fit alongside Maddie’s character arc. It is easy to see how author Laura Lippman drew parallels between Maddie and Cleo. Still, Cleo is the far more interesting personality on screen, and her story feels muddled by including Maddie’s arc.
All seven episodes of Lady in the Lake are directed by Alma Har’el, who is also credited as a writer of three episodes. Har’el’s ex-husband, writer/director Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time), wrote two episodes with Briana Belser, Nambi E. Kelley, and Sheila Wilson on the remaining chapters. The novel, which spanned three hundred and fifty pages, feels watered down to fit a seven-episode limited series. Breakout actress Mikey Madison has a character who fits into Maddie’s arc and seems unnecessary in service of the overall narrative of the series. With the two storylines unfolding alongside each other, there is competition for priority in the stories, forcing the final two chapters of the series to feel rushed and underwhelming. There is something missing in this series’s structure that cannot be made up for by the performances and fantastic soundtrack.
It is a shame to say that what negatively impacts Lady in the Lake is Natalie Portman, but Maddie’s storyline is the less interesting of the two threads in this series. As good as Portman always is, she is as underwhelming and, at times, annoying as Maddie Schwartz. On the other hand, Moses Ingram is absolutely fantastic as Cleo, and if these stories had been told in two distinct series, Cleo’s tale would have been the clear winner of the two. There are a lot of interesting stories mixed together in Lady of the Lake. Still, the finished product feels like it is trying too hard to cater to different types of series, neither of which is given the priority it deserves, resulting in a good but not great show.
Lady in the Lake premieres with two episodes on July 19th on AppleTV+.
