Lady Voyeur Review: Yellow Thriller Elements, Making It Less Engaging and Interesting | Olhar Indiscreto
Cast: Débora Nascimento, Emanuelle Araújo, Ângelo Rodrigues, Nikolas Antunes
Creator: Marcela Citterio
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 2.5/5 (two and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
The miniseries Lady Voyeur (Olhar Indiscreto) arrives on Netflix from Brazil, which starts as an almost erotic version of Rear Window and then slides inexorably into surreal telenovela situations, as we will explain in this review. The project written by Marcela Citterio and Camila Raffanti crumbles very quickly to explain situations and behaviors which, episode after episode, appear increasingly incomprehensible and unintentionally hilarious.
The catalog of the streaming giant is always enriched with titles from all over the world: to warm up the first days of 2023, from a “hotter” Brazil than ever, comes a crime series with which Netflix tries once again to capture the attention of the broad public that loves this kind of story. As we will see in this review of Lady Voyeur, however, more than in the territories of the thriller genre that drives subscribers to the platform crazy (see the recent success of series such as Dahmer – The monster or The Watcher) we find ourselves in those of the soap opera with bits of cheeky eroticism (the hot sequences between the characters are wasted, even when it would not be necessary).
Lady Voyeur Review: The Story
Miranda is a professional hacker who enjoys spying on the love affairs of her neighbour, a beautiful prostitute. One day she will strike up a relationship with one of her clients, the charming Fernando. However, the relationship will drag her into a mystery that will endanger her own life. At the center of the story, we find a young hacker, Miranda (Débora Nascimento), a woman with a dark past behind her who lives a rather lonely life. Her days are brightened up by visits from a friend and the sexual adventures of her neighbor, Cléo (Emanuelle Araújo), a beautiful prostitute. One of Miranda’s “hobbies” is, to fa at her neighbor and film her love encounters: among her clients, there is one, then, for whom the woman feels a very strong attraction, and whom she looks forward to seeing again every Friday. Through him, Miranda will be embroiled in a dangerous mystery: one day Cleo has to spend a weekend with a client and asks the woman to look after her dog and her apartment while she’s away.
When she is at the house of her neighbor Miranda, the charming Friday customer arrives, mistaking her for a woman of her trade, and dragging her into a hot meeting. Miranda will then discover that Fernando (Nikolas Antunes), this is his name, is part of one of the most prestigious families in the city, owner of the Prado hotel chain: the man will ask her to help him unmask, like his hacker skills, the shady dealings of his brother-in-law Heitor (Ângelo Rodrigues), according to him involved in terrible trafficking. The death of his beloved sister Diana, Heitor’s dissatisfied wife, will enmesh Miranda in a very dangerous intrigue. Which could endanger her own life.
Lady Voyeur Review and Analysis
The first episode of Indiscreet Look, despite the not entirely justified sex scenes, still promised quite well thanks to the exchange of persons, an involuntary homicide and the first details of what seemed to be a more interesting mystery, without forgetting that, moving with the scenes between past and present, it was known from the first minute that there would be other deaths and dangers in Miranda’s story. However, Citterio and Raffanti soon lost the reins of the story and not even the directors involved were able to make sense of the succession of events.
More than the continuous sexual activity of the protagonists, which reaches hilarious peaks after a dramatic death with a joke in which one wonders if the couple (whose identity we do not reveal so as not to spoil the vision of those who will resist until that episode ) just couldn’t wait, what is striking in the negative about the screenplay is that to find an explanation for the behavior and actions of the characters, we arrive at a crescendo of dramas and crazy moments that completely lose sight of logic and realism. Leaving behind the intriguing premise of a woman who finds herself taking an active role in the life of a person she has observed daily, the miniseries begins to fall apart inexorably and progressively delves into the lives of the families involved.
As we initially anticipated, Lady Voyeur starts from the premises of the erotic thriller (the hot scenes are plentiful every episode is full of them) which soon however leads to the more classic dynamics of the soap opera: extremely risky twists, dysfunctional family relationships, exchanges of couples and endless liaisons. All this, then, correlated by a cast of beautiful people who – unfortunately – don’t have much to offer in terms of acting. The protagonist Débora Nascimento gives it all in her role, but she fails to be particularly credible in the part of a tormented hacker, in the throes of passion for one (or more) of her co-stars. Although we try to give her progressively more depth in the series by slowly revealing the dark sides of her past, Miranda remains a rather flat character with which the viewer cannot create who knows what emotional involvement.
The same goes for all the other characters, undoubtedly beautiful to look at, but not particularly exciting to follow in their “adventures”. Difficult to get around it, Lady Voyeur did not capture us, especially how the plot unfolds over the course of the different episodes (10 in total). More space is given to the amorous encounters between the characters (in certain moments a little out of place) than to the correct unveiling of the mystery. During the narration, not particularly interesting storylines are piled up (such as that of the relationship between Heitor’s bodyguard and Miranda’s friend), which take away space from the thriller plot and certainly deserved a different study.
Furthermore, the flash-forward ploy (in certain moments we are transported three months after the events narrated) fails to increase the viewer’s curiosity but only ends up confusing and detaching it more. Lady Voyeur, created by Marcela Citterio, is a product that would like to target a decidedly broad audience but – at least here in Italy, where the passion for telenovelas is perhaps a little less strong than in Brazil – it could dissatisfy those who are searching for shows more properly focused on thriller and mystery.
Furthermore, after the first few episodes, time jumps to make the mysteries of Pretty Little Liars seem almost like a documentary on the life of teenagers. Without revealing too much, Miranda manages to survive increasingly deadly situations, even being buried alive or pushed out of a window… In the final bars, when the true bond that binds her to one of the characters is revealed, it seems at times to be faced with the adaptation of unsuccessful fan fiction. The vision of the miniseries, for those who have no problem watching sequences that seem taken from 365 Days inserted without particular logic in the story, still manages to entertain and in several moments the interpreters know how to use the available material to their advantage to give a little emotional depth to the characters, however, the feeling that it is a project that performs an involution until it collapses in the final stages is almost inevitable.
Lady Voyeur Review: The Last Words
Lady Voyeur is a series that pushes too much on telenovela elements rather than yellow thriller elements, making it less engaging and interesting. The Brazilian miniseries Lady Voyeur, as has unfortunately been underlined in the review, is a wasted opportunity to offer a mix of genres and non-binding entertainment. Episode after episode, the character of Miranda loses every interesting piece, and she could make it original until it becomes a one-dimensional presence.
