Disclaimer
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Disclaimerissues a warning to its audience early on: Beware of narrative and form.
Well, that depends.
Shes all wanker and shagging and knickers.
The names of various tube stops.
But theyre young, and theyre in love.
Well, if not in love, they are at least in Venice.
Jonathans a dick, but not too much of a dick.
They flash the world Sashas underpants.
They make out on the train platform.
For Sasha, though, there will be a reprieve.
Her continental shenanigans are cut short by a death in the family, leaving Jonathan to tour Europe alone.
He roams a bit aimlessly, trying and failing to strike up conversations with other teens.
He sends a postcard to his mum from Pisa before deciding to head to the nearby coast.
The world belongs to him.
Catherine is about to collect an honor for being a beacon of truth, which she seems pleased about.
Hes also a wine guy.
Two features catch her eye.
The dedication: To my son, Jonathan.
And the disclaimer: Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.
Punchy, a built-in marketing campaign.
Something about the juxtaposition of these two sentiments persuades Catherine to crack the book right away.
We see flashes of her as a younger womanin flagranteand relishing her sexuality.
We see her clutching someone close, and we see a dead body washed up on a beach.
When she recovers, Cathy burns her copy ofThe Perfect Strangerin the kitchen sink.
The books about her, she thinks.
Here, Cuarons writing veers into the theatrical.
She even manages not to confess to Robert, who calls her Saint Catherine and calms her nerves.
Then theres timeline No.
This one is about vengeance.
This revolution in how he will spend his days shakes something loose in Stephen.
Nine years after his wife Nancys death, hes finally motivated to donate her old clothes.
He revisits her things; he revisits his grief.
Catherine beside a dead body.
Jonathans body.To my son, Jonathan.
She was typing, always typing.
Stephen never knew what she was working on, but, of course, we already do.
Enough, it seems enough.
Stephen, so recently circling lifes drain, finds a renewed sense of purpose.
A Nikon that Jonathan hardly knows how to use.
In fact, there are more stupid-lovely moments in one episode ofDisclaimerthan in most feature films.
Imagine being able to smell your dead son again two decades on.
There is a small twist at the episodes end.
Whatever Catherine did (or didnt do?)
to cause (or not prevent?)
Jonathans death happened less deeply in the past than many viewers, myself included, may have initially assumed.
Shes already a mother when Jonathan starts taking her photo on the beach.
