Vladimir (Netflix) Review: Conceptually Incomplete 

Netflix’s Vladimir, inspired by Julia May Jonas’ debut novel, tries its hardest to serve up some steamy storytelling, but ultimately fails to deliver.

With the announcement of its screen adaptation, by Netflix nonetheless, and its pitch perfect casting, it seemed like Jones’ tale of passion and power was about to tease and torture an entirely new audience. However, the television series adaptation of Vladimir is unable to deliver on any of its promises of provocative and promiscuous storytelling prowess. 

Netflix’s Vladimir opens up on a frustrated and seemingly heavily repressed narrator (Rachel Weisz, of Black Widow) coming to terms with her lack of power. She’s in her 50s and seemingly no longer the kind of person someone would go out of their way to try and impress. It’s not her fault, however. She used to be one of the most beloved professors on her small liberal arts college campus in upstate New York. Her husband of many decades, John (John Slattery, of Nuremberg), was head of the English department and she taught the most highly sought-after courses they had to offer. Together, they were treated like a royal couple on campus.

That is, until John had a slew of women come forward in the light of the #MeToo movement to unearth the affairs they had with him while they were students. While all the women were over 18, and he and the narrator do have an open marriage, the power imbalance of his repeated relationships with students was enough to get him suspended from his position while they figured out a date for his hearing in front of the school board. His affairs are the talk of the campus and the students and staff are wondering how the narrator is still standing by him during this fallout. 

It feels like the narrator will never be able to get out from under the weight of her husband’s public indiscretions until the arrival of a new professor in the English department, the handsome and charming Vladimir Vladinski (Leo Woodall, of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy). A young, celebrated and critically acclaimed novelist, Vladimir comes to teach at this university while he is working on his next book and immediately takes a liking to the narrator.  

Despite his having a wife, who works as an adjunct professor in the English department, and a young child, the narrator feels an undeniable pull towards him. Through her narration, she imagines intense sexual trysts with him as she tries to unpack their every interaction to find any semblance of reciprocation. However, as she’s proven to be unreliable before, we, as the audience questions alongside her, is she making all this up?

Vladimir is not a show about sex, but rather a show displaying the power of desire. Compared to how sexual the show is,very little sex actually happens throughout its runtime. It sets itself up to tempt audiences and have them longing for the lead characters to get together just as much as the narrator herself wants them to sleep with one another. But the show doesn’t do nearly enough to actually raise the temperature or stakes of it’s story. 

Whereas Jones’ book so successfully mixed tone, the tone of the series is all over the place. It leans too far humorous to take the serious moments seriously and has a score that at times feels completely out of line with what the characters are saying, which harshly undermines their intentions. Perhaps it’s due to the confusion in tone, but the dialogue also feels egregiously stilted and at times just downright awkward. 

The offense that sets the vibe of the show off most detrimentally is the narrator speaking directly to the camera to emulate the first-person narration within the book. The ability to pull this style of narration off is so difficult to sell convincingly and, unfortunately for the usually brilliant Rachel Weisz, it is entirely unconvincing in the narrative structure of the show.  

In a similar vein, the arcs of literally all of the characters seem convoluted and ill-thought-out. It is established almost immediately (and dropped just as quickly until the last moment of the show) that the narrator is unreliable, which gives some grace to characters in the show saying things that feel out of character for them at times, especially Vladimir, whom the narrator herself cannot get a read on. That being said, there are several points throughout the show where he acts like a completely different person in a way that does not seem to serve the plot at all. His wife and even John have moments of total lapse in character as well that are never really explained with any later revelation. 

Above all else, Vladimir feels conceptually incomplete. The voice of the narrator does not feel consistent, and even though we are experiencing events through her eyes, the show doesn’t try to disconcern where our attention or focus should lie at any given time. It doesn’t investigate desire, passion, or lust with any degree of serious contemplation, making these moments feel more like shock-value additives than actual motivating factors in the narrator’s behavior. It’s unfortunate as Weisz, Woodall and Slattery’s performances aren’t bad; they just aren’t incorporated into a show that understands the story it’s trying to tell. If you are longing for a steamy romantic think piece, I recommend you continue your search elsewhere. 

Vladimir is now available to stream globally on Netflix.