Natasha Lyonne gets into the captivating and captivating "Russian doll" of Netflix time

Time can be a real bitch.

You may have noticed, in 2019, that time feels relative. Monday looks like Friday, January to June, weeks to decades that go by in seconds. From Netflix Russian doll – about a woman who keeps coming back to the night of her life – is not an answer to this rubbery reality, but the show is a concise and captivating study of what makes us living and it could not be more fit.

Natasha Lyonne plays Nadia, a woman whose existential dread at her 36th birthday translates into her quick death by a car crash later in the night. But as we know from the trailer, Nadia does not die – at least, death does not end her life. She returns at the same time to her friend's bathroom at the birthday party and continues to live from that day whenever something new kills her.

It must be said at the outset that, despite inevitable comparisons, Russian doll is hardly like marmot day. This is not the most accurate badogy, but it may be the only one for a premise in which the main character resets several times at the same time in his life. Russian doll immediately free from the constraints of this structure; just in the first episode, Nadia saw two radically different versions of her evening that rebadure viewers, we do not get bored and the fact that there is no need to be bored with " Gotta Get Up "by Ty Segall.

In doing so, the series makes it clear that Nadia did not celebrate her birthday to fix one detail at a time and tediously change her reality. The butterfly effect is real and exponential. when she does not take a knuckle or say a phrase to someone, it does not look like a hole in the timeline, but to a new organic path. Each bbad event is not simply removed from the sum of events, but rather changes its composition. Life, or the reality experienced by Nadia, is a totality – a solution, not a mix.

Sometimes we catch up with Nadia a few days after her birthday, when she resisted the situation very well (she avoided a treacherous staircase, looked for fast taxis) and continued to live her life – at least, as much as it did. we could expect it. when will she know what will inevitably happen and that will bring her back unceremoniously to her friend's scary bathroom (seriously, this bathroom).

While she is still experiencing more loops, Nadia understands why this could happen to her. She notices details, cracks in the fabric of time and reality such as missing people (and fish) and rotten fruits. She wonders what caused the loop. was it drugs? The scary bathroom? Building? The neighborhood? Towards the end, she begins to ask heavier questions; is this purgatory? Is it hell? Why she, or is it narcissism? What does time and morality have in common?

Like with marmot dayevents are erased, but Nadia's memory is not. His mind lives days that his body will never see. Around her, the very fabric of reality seems to be decaying in a visible way and, although she rejects narcissism, she has no choice but to believe that she does not believe in anything else. it has a role to play in solving these problems. There is an awkward story of her mother who never pays quite, but that makes some striking visuals in the last episodes reinforce the urgency for Nadia to escape this loop.

Lyonne is, unsurprisingly but always welcoming, a formidable force in a stimulating role. Never before has her specific charm been so naked, not to mention her work co-creating, co-writing and helping to achieve the eight episodes with an all-female team (her main companion criminal throughout Sleep with other people writer Leslye Headland).

A supporting cast including Greta Lee, Yul Vazquez, Elizabeth Ashley, Charlie Barnett and Ritesh Rajan never gets old, even with the repetition of dialogues, manners, circumstances and even wardrobes. Nadia's friendship with the characters of Lee and Vazquez is particularly well done, given the short time we spend with the trio, because his focus with fiery hair reluctantly runs through the course of his hero.

Russian doll is fast and satisfying, an immersive frenzy that will make you ask big questions and enjoy life while drinking popcorn and moving on to the next episode. He is, sometimes at the same moment, very bittersweet and funny to laugh. It is a simplified execution of deliberate narrations and choice of characters executed according to admirable and enviable standards. This does not necessarily merit a second season, but the formula could be something Netflix takes note of for the future.

Russian doll is now streaming on Netflix.