Nest magazine – Jude Law excels in 1980s thriller of excess | Detective novels

Jude Law salesman’s sparkling and hypocritical smile has rarely been better used than in Sean Durkin’s thorny domestic drama The nest. As the brash boy of British town Rory, he unleashes the full force of his skin-deep charm with outstretched arms as he welcomes his American family to the 17th-century Surrey mansion he has rented for one year “with option to purchase”. Having unilaterally decided to move them all from a comfortable life in New York to the UK to take advantage of the looming financial market deregulation of the 1980s, Rory is fully invested in the move to this crumbling heap. The ostentatious and impractical home, with its protruding turrets and Valium’s blank gaze from its windows, is an integral part of the oversized identity Rory creates for himself. It is not a house, it is a milestone on a social rise, a capricious wife trophy of a building. No wonder, then, that the mansion is starting to feel so evil, in its own way, as The brilliant‘s Overlook hotel.

As he already demonstrated with his accomplished debut feature film, Martha Marcy May Marlene, writer and director Durkin is supremely accomplished when it comes to subtly modulated tonal changes. With the introduction of a jarring note to the upscale restaurant jazz that makes up the film’s underhanded score (kudos to Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire for creating music that sounds both impeccably tasteful and sarcastic), there is a hint of an imbalance that is undermining the foundations of the family in their new home. A mid-shot that grabs the face of Rory’s wife, Allison (Fargo‘s Carrie Coon), as she mulls over the bitter realization that her husband has lied to her, lowers the temperature in the following scenes by several degrees. The use of the unfriendly architecture of the building is particularly effective. A photo of a child’s toy being dragged along a brick parapet creates a lurch of apprehension. The halls of the house are soaked in light like blotting paper; shadows eat away at the edge of the frame, and the sunny enthusiasm of Rory’s 10-year-old son Ben gradually fades.

Not that Rory notices his son closing in on himself miserably, his stepdaughter, Sam (Oona Roche), falls with a bad crowd and his wife’s eyes freeze when he speaks on his behalf. He’s riding the reign of being the returned prodigal son, the big New Yorker fish about to make waves across the Atlantic. A rising star in an industry in which well-breakfasted men talk about “vision” but mean “greed,” Rory has adhered to his own mythology that he created for himself at the top of the market. And the markets tend to collapse.

The performances have a complex angularity throughout, but Law in particular is formidable in this slippery role. A scene in which he visits his estranged mother (Anne Reid, in beautifully poisonous form) is pure uneasiness, at the forefront of a verbal duel between two equally matched narcissists. And even in less successful scenes – a taxi wake-up call to his conscience that was obviously written by someone who has never met a London cab driver – Law manages to be both utterly genuine and brilliantly outrageous. of confidence.