Superficially stylishly expressive and dreamy but listlessly placed, overfilled with plot and straining to make thematic connections between its two lead characters, “Lady In The Lake” is a frustrating and often uninvolving series bogged down in too many storylines. Worse, it ambitiously tries to tell too disparate narratives and then weave them together but frequently spins its wheels and never really engages. On paper, it’s abounding with significant talents; it has an accomplished writer/director at the helm, two powerhouse leads (Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram), and a solid supporting cast (Wood Harris, Noah Jupe, Y’lan Noel, and Byron Bowers). Still, despite these promising elements, the series never really compels or comes together, making for a soggy slog of a watch.
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Set in Baltimore in 1966, the series, written and directed by Alma Har’el (“Honeyboy”), though writers like Boaz Yakin and Briana Belser also contribute, “Lady In The Lake” begins with the disappearance of Tessie Fine, a young Jewish girl on Thanksgiving Day. It then pivots to the lives of two disparate women, a Jewish housewife, Maddie Schwartz (Natalie Portman, too overcooked in her performance), and Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram, much more robust), a black mother struggling to provide for her family while navigating Baltimore’s divided and fractious political underbelly.
Featuring a pretentiously breathy and clunky voiceover meant to be haunting and evocative but mostly just unwieldy, Ingram’s Johnson narrates as a ghost from beyond the dead. “You said no one cared until you came along,” Johnson says, foreshadowing the evolution that Schwartz will make from housewife to journalist, “But the truth is, you came at the end of my story and turned it into your beginning.”
This element intrigues and suggests exploitation and white privilege abuse—a white woman obsessed with unraveling the mystery of a Black woman’s death but self-serving in the way she tries to leverage it as her story of reinvention and a new career.
And while “Lady In The Lake” does play with the idea—the most interesting one the series has— Schwartz’s ambitions and personal journey outweighing the lives of less fortunate people of color, the series only occasionally serves it as a sharp criticism of its white protagonist. Because Schwartz is the de facto lead, ‘Lake’ doesn’t seem overly interested in interrogating the notion too sharply other than a few key moments.
Instead, it focuses on the story of a murder that’s already been explained right off the bat in the voiceover; the viewer sitting and waiting to learn who did it, the how and why, but it mostly kills any sense of urgency, suspense, or mystery. “Lady In The Lake” is often positioned as an intense noir thriller, and while it’s atmospheric, sure (though overbearing in this regard), there’s rarely anything to be thrilled or surprised about, even in a semi-twist ending.
In Schwartz’s story, the impulsive Jewish mother seems to want both to forget and reclaim the past, escaping her traumas (rendered as cliches awash with moody flashbacks) while trying to reclaim a sense of self and identity that she missed out on by becoming a housewife. In need of change, she abruptly leaves her overbearing husband (Brett Gelman) and son (Noah Jupe) over one little incident that doesn’t convince. Yet she seems to be anxiety-riddled and overly panicked about the disappearance of Tessie Fine, to such a consuming degree that it seems unreasonable. We’ll find out why later, and it’s connected to the past she wants to forget, but it’s frustrating at first, watching her act irrationally and histrionically. The idea behind it all— as expressed in the Laura Lippman book it’s based on, is that Fine’s disappearance unlocks some innocence-lost catalyst in Portman’s Maddie, sparking an obsession that spins her off into investigative journalism. But it just never feels believable, and how she seems to charm herself into a newsroom feels far-fetched. In short, the emotional logic of the series rarely feels credible, and that begets a continuously damaging domino effect throughout.
The pacing of the show is a bit interminable too—several longwinded musical interludes kill the momentum too— seven 50-minute episodes that aren’t very gripping and seem like they could’ve been easily packaged into a shorter and tighter four eps (there’s even one with Portman’s character unconscious in the hospital and it’s that dreaded kind of flashback episode that luxuriates in itself and doesn’t reveal anything beyond what’s been heavily hinted at the entire time).
Maddie, victimized by a much older man while still in her teens, is haunted by this incident, but given the story jumps all over the place to Maddie’s present and past, and the same for Cleo Johnson, plus tons of detours, by the time any revelations are made, they’re not very affecting.
Like the book, the show wants to express connections between the two women and the collision course; they’re both, but Cleo’s story, in many ways, is shortchanged (as is Tessie Fine’s). She’s estranged from her husband, an aspiring comedian (Byron Bowers), and juggling raising her sons, one of them sick, while working at a club and doing shady business on behalf of its crooked owner, the well-tailored gangster Shell Gordon (Wood Harris from “The Wire”), always looking to take advantage of anyone.
Cleo actually works several jobs to survive: a barkeep, a store window model, and volunteers for local politicians trying to weed out corruption in Baltimore’s Black community, which provokes Gordon’s ire. And tragically, she gets sucked into Baltimore’s crime underworld. But it’s mostly a slow downward slope for the character.
All of this is to say nothing about so many other elaborate subplots—Tessie Fine’s killer, the killer’s mother, Maddie’s deeper foray into journalism, the Black police officer that Maddie sleeps with, and one of Shell Gordon’s thugs who ultimately shows he has a conscience— which speak to just overstuffed the narrative is.
Sure, “Lady In The Lake” has much on its mind, issues of race, gender, and power and corruptions are all seen from different perspectives, but rarely does the show say anything meaningful about them beyond the obvious. While sure, life should be complex, as rendered in the series, it feels like ‘Lake’ wants to have it both ways, positioning Maddie as a not-always admirable figure but also an empowered woman looking to strike out on her own, but the truth is, it might have been served better by just committing to these flaws and critiquing her harder.
Visually, “Lady In The Lake” is drab, with its beiges, underlit muted colors, and ugly mustard hews. The dour mood is enervating, as is the jazzy score meant to be redolent of the past, with its ghostly cries, but it feels a little noir hackneyed.
Har’el’s series seems desperate to convey feverish mysterious allure to everything—it’s constant over-stylized flashbacks, often in slow motion while Ingram delivers a more awkward voiceover— but it never persuades and often feels overwrought and melodramatic. With no authentic mystery, suspense, or thrills, ‘Lake’ becomes a character portrait of two women trying to navigate their complex lives and the way they overlap, but it’s too scattered to engross and a little tedious.
The finale attempts to redeem Cleo’s thread and focus further on her story, but by then, it’s just a little too late. ‘Lake’ wants to talk about how women are often punished and the high costs they must pay to chase their dreams and ambitions and want more, especially given the limitations of 1966. Fair in theory, but the slanted execution just leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Maddie, never quite the hero ‘Lake’ wants her to be and selfishly yearning to be the central protagonist of her own life, does so, ultimately, at the expense of everyone else. [C-]
The first two episodes of Lady in the Lake begin streaming July 19 on Apple TV+, with additional episodes releasing weekly.