No silly intro or hotel-flavored gag to break the ice in the Aperol Spritz glass: the second season of the white lotuswhich comes out on Sunday in Crave, in French and English, gets a near-perfect rating on TripAdvisor.
Posted at 8:15 am
Cleanliness (trio) done right, discretion over indiscretions, and ultra-professional staff—in every sense of the word—loved my stay at this chic establishment with understated, not ostentatious, luxury.
In fact, I swallowed at once the five chapters (out of a total of seven) that the production gave me. Bye, friend! Thank you! I ask!
It’s funny, gritty, awkward, and witty all at once. Bonus: there is still one death to be elucidated in the context of the existential crisis of hyper-rich customers, 1% of the planet, but little inclined to introspection.
The second installment leaves Hawaii and teleports to another establishment of The White Lotus chain in Taormina, Sicily. It’s magnificent. The sparkling Ionian Sea, the volcanic vineyards, the retro blue and white umbrellas, the gleaming marble, the sparkling prosecco in the glasses, the sweet pop music of Raffaella Carrà, the backfiring of Vespas, this is smart and entertaining, at a low price.
And I googled it all to save you from having to: the American miniseries was shot at the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace in Taormina, which was housed in a former 15th-century convent.me century overlooking Etna. The cost ? More than $1500 per night, which does not include buffet lunch or airfare. That’s a lot of UNICEF piggy banks to empty.
Going back to our privileged travelers, they live the same hotel experience as their companions from the first Hawaiian incarnation. The series begins again with the finale: the corpse of a client floats in the blue sea. The hotel staff had a great time: there would not be a single dead, but several dead to report. Oh!
The plot then goes back a week and shows us the arrival, always by boat, of American tourists whom we will follow for seven days. Day one, episode one, day two, episode two, and so on.
Two couples in their thirties were screwed at the heart of this Italian divorce. the nerd Shy Ethan (Will Sharpe) and snappy Harper (Aubrey Plaza) play the typical progressive middle-class couple, donating to charity, watching the news and reading the newspaper. New Yorkergender.
Ethan made his fortune in techno, Harper works as an employment lawyer. They share a connecting room with Cameron (Theo James), a brother banker Ethan met in college, and his perfect wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy, the series’ breakout).
At the first dinner, tension arises between the four “friends” who know very little about each other. The first couple, without children, distrusts the second who loves each other too much, who shows it too much, who has too many fun and who turns a blind eye to mutual jokes, let’s say. The further the story progresses, the more the quartet is challenged and tests its limits, always one glass of wine away from slipping.
Also on the radar is the Di Grasso family, made up of a Stanford-educated son (Adam DiMarco), a Hollywood producer father (Michael Imperioli, aka Christopher in The sopranos) and the seductive grandfather (F. Murray Abraham). Here again, the clash of generations hits hard, Gen Z versus the baby boomers.
The young di Grasso, well versed in consent and patriarchy, resents his fickle father, who also resents his own libertine father. The severity of the reproaches, which pepper the son as well as the father and grandfather, rises with each of his meals, and it’s tasty.
The only surviving character from the first chapter is the completely ignored heiress Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), still married to Greg (Jon Gries), who she met at the White Lotus in Hawaii. Poor Tanya and the sad came from her. All the gold of men will never absorb the pain of living on it. Meanwhile, it is her assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) who pays the price for Tanya’s deep unhappiness.
Unlike the first season, the white lotus 2 he shows little interest in the hotel’s employees, apart from the manager of the neoclassical establishment, Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), a brittle woman with a big secret. A local prostitute (Simona Tabasco) and her pianist friend (Beatrice Granno) will add a lot of spice to the rather acid trip of our favorite vacationers.
the white lotus portrays unhappy, self-centered, unreasonable, moody and disconnected people, whom we end up becoming attached to. They are not to be pitied in their Prada suits or Versace silk shirts. Jealousy eats away at them, fostering unhealthy power dynamics, and sex, the main fuel for the white lotus 2pushes them to the edge of the cliff.
We are here in an elegantly stitched tragicomedy. The scene in which a distraught Tanya attends a performance of madam butterfly, in the fifth episode, is not insignificant. As in Puccini’s opera, the story told in the white lotus 2 it is a story of death, betrayal and despair, wrapped in elegant suits.
#star #hotel #star #series