Meursault
from Camus’s The Stranger would
understand. You’re at the beach, its hot, so you just kill some random dude. However,
Cora Tanner does it in front of her husband and several dozen horrified
witnesses. She would have the world believe she did it in a moment of madness,
but the grizzled detective in charge suspects Tanner had more personal
motivations than the Imp of Perverse in Antonio Campos pilot for The Sinner (trailer here), which premiered
at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, in advance of its USA network broadcast.
Tanner
has a domineering mother-in-law and a weak momma’s husband. She works all day
at the family business, then she and the spineless Mason pick-up their toddler from
his parent’s house, where they have dinner, before turning in for the night in
their next-door home. We wouldn’t blame her for killing someone, but we have to
question her choice of victim.
Granted,
his girlfriend was being kind of obnoxious, but it was the entitled young
man-about-town whom Tanner Ginsu-ed up like a vintage 1980s slasher-killer. She
immediately confesses, but says little else. She implies it was a case of temporary
insanity, but refuses to say anything to establish her case. It all makes
slightly pervy Det. Harry Ambrose deeply suspicious. He is determined to sniff
out some sort of motive before Tanner’s guilty plea seals her fate, but nobody
wants to help him—least of all Tanner.
Again,
The Sinner shows the challenges of showcasing
episodic work at film festivals. The pilot is definitely cinematic, as one
might expect from a stylist like Campos and cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes, who
has considerable film credits as a DP and a director of his own projects. However,
it just feels like it barely began when the forty-five minutes are up. Granted,
that can and probably should be taken as a good sign, but it would have been
nice for audience members to have a chance to see more of the give and take
between the series two biggest stars, Jessica Biel and Bill Pullman playing
Tanner and Ambrose, before the post-screening panel discussion.
Still,
the pilot ends with some promising revelations—or rather more accurately, hints
of revelations. It definitely leaves viewers intrigued and wanting to see more
of the mystery unspool. However, you can live a full and satisfying life
without watching Bill Pullman (who happened to star in the Broadway production
of The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?)
engaging in a d/s humiliation session with his ex-mistress.
Be
that as it may, Pullman is mostly very good as the haggard but incisively
intelligent Ambrose. It is also impressive how thoroughly Biel glammed down to
play Tanner. She just looks like an average person in Sinner, except when she is drenched in blood splatter. However,
even at her Plain Janest, it is hard to believe Biel’s Tanner is hitched to the
putzy Mason and his sad excuse for a beard, played with tiresome whininess by
Christopher Abbott.
