Anonymous wrote:So I was curious so I went and got the novel, which is actually pretty great. The idea is that she's playing with all the tropes you find in classic literature where the man falls for a younger ingenue. I was the one who said Vlad seemed kind of boring and dull in the movie -- but what you become aware of in the novel is that most of the fantasy takes place in her mind, and just like when you have an older colleague who goes on and on about his brilliant twenty something girlfriend who is wise beyond her years, it's pretty obvious that she's projecting. She seems what she wants to see. Honestly, in the novel she comes a bit more unhinged and stalkerish, going to visit the former girlfriend who works in the bakery, etc, stealing the files. But it's very Nabokovian, which is probably why she named it Vladimir and made him Russian, etc. There are overtones of Lolita and nabokov also slept with his students (taught at Wellesley for awhile) and wrote academic novels about college campuses. The novel is much more explicitly satirical, with the caricature of the politically correct college professor who has an open marriage and gay daughter, etc. etc. etc. Anyway, some of the choices in the TV series made more sense to me once I read the novel.

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t care for it. It was very weird. And Rachel Weisz looks good for 56 but she definitely looks older now. I don’t really see a young hot male like Vlad falling for her. When they finally had sex she acted very strange in the bedroom and made weird facial expressions, almost like she was in pain. It was not sexy at all.

The guy who played Vlad was in White Lotus Season 2. He had a heavy British accent then. I wonder if both Rachel and Vlad were disguising their scdebta for the roles.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think he is supposed to be Slavic.
I know a lot of Hispanics with Slavic names and I can imagine pretty much any ethnic origin person having a name Vladimir for whatever reason. Maybe his parents were weird namers.

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t care for it. It was very weird. And Rachel Weisz looks good for 56 but she definitely looks older now. I don’t really see a young hot male like Vlad falling for her. When they finally had sex she acted very strange in the bedroom and made weird facial expressions, almost like she was in pain. It was not sexy at all.

The guy who played Vlad was in White Lotus Season 2. He had a heavy British accent then. I wonder if both Rachel and Vlad were disguising their scdebta for the roles.

Anonymous wrote:I started it then immediately started googling how old Rachel Weisz was. I thought her plastic surgery looked bad and obvious. The cheek implants in particular looked very fake.

Anonymous wrote:Is the male lead really meant to be someone people are lusting after? But why? He seems so boring. Like a fratty white boy. You would think a literature professor would go after someone a bit more swarthy and exotic. His wife seemed a lot more interesting, also he didn’t seem particularly Slavic. In my mind ai was picturing a young Baryshnikov.

Also I was curious as to what fictional college this was meant to be taking place at and the author was a professor at Skidmore - in case you are wondering.