For centuries, women have been objects of desire, and men have been the ones who have desired them. While female lust has been a growing phenomenon (because apparently it's the only way men understand it) in the media, in recent years we've seen a dozen movies and TV shows about older women and younger men. Whether you consider this natural or pedophilic is a matter of debate, but you may have noticed this new trend.
It seems that Julia May Jonas's Vladimir is a novel that emerged at the heart of this trend in 2022. Although I haven't read the book, I can imagine the fascination it generated, and I also understand why a Netflix series was created so soon after its release. These days, the turnover is so fast that sometimes the book isn't even finished before it hits our screens. The appeal of Vladimir doesn't lie in its depiction of a woman in her fifties who decides to pursue a man nearing thirty; in fact, it's her appeal that makes her so interesting.
Creator: Julia May Jonas
Stars: Rachel Weisz, Kayli Carter, Leo Woodall
The series, Vladimir, centers on a protagonist whose name we never learn, though we know practically everything else about her. She's a literature professor—that is, she works in the humanities; she's married but in an open relationship; and she's obsessed with her bisexual daughter and can't stop smothering her. I know, it's a long name, but when she meets Vlad, a younger, more attractive assistant, while her husband John is about to be summoned to a Title IX hearing for inappropriate relationships with his students, the irony is undeniable. The protagonist's romance with Vlad, to our disappointment, is mostly in her head. But it makes you question everything, simply out of vicarious embarrassment at seeing a woman lose herself in front of other people just for a younger man. Sure, we're talking about Leo Woodall, but in his opening lines, Vlad says he has body dysmorphia.
This series isn't about sex. It's not even about desire. It's a marathon of thoughts on power, age, and gender. We're talking about academics, unreliable storytellers, and unstable characters we don't necessarily like. Woodall plays Vlad, the protagonist, married to the young and gorgeous Cynthia, who also suffers from her own problems. Nobody here is ordinary; everyone has flaws, but I suppose the question remains: who has the most flaws? So, before you see this poster and assume this will be the sexiest series you'll watch this year, let me turn that on its head. It's eight episodes packed with anticipation and dialogue.
The eight-part series has episodes of about 30 minutes each and focuses on anticipation rather than climax, if you know what I mean. At one point, when she's in a conference room, I thought I was so uncomfortable it was worse than watching Gaspar Noé's Climax. There's a sense of dread from beginning to end, and you never really connect with any of the characters. But that's precisely when it makes you think. When you watch a show like this, about a man fantasizing about a younger woman, you either get the creeps or think, "Oh, I guess this is normal" (not to mention that Jenna Ortega and Martin Freeman movie, ugh!), but when you see a woman in the same situation, you feel differently. In Vladimir, the protagonist dreams of being attractive to Vlad, not just sleeping with him because she's hot. In fact, she thinks the opposite. She's terribly insecure and believes she's completely undesirable now that she's gone through menopause, but her husband can just keep going as he did 10 years ago. There's a very interesting scene in the show with students with piercings asking questions about piercings.
I must admit I quite enjoyed the song selection, and visually, it's exactly what you'd expect from a show called Vladimir with the "That" poster. The steamy moments are unlike anything you've seen in a long time (this feels very Gen Z), and while it's not exactly safe to watch with your parents, you could watch it with a close friend. The series is very bright, but it works to make you feel like you're on a college campus with drab offices and classrooms devoid of any decoration. I think this story benefits from being a series rather than a film, but I can't quite explain why. Interestingly, the series begins with a narrative device where the protagonist speaks to us six weeks after everything "really" begins, but it doesn't quite fit, which made me think the writers had something particularly mind-blowing in the works before they gave up. But ultimately, I realized that was the point.
As for the secondary characters, they're generally quite well-written. Vladimir doesn't have a particularly strong personality beyond being a "charming young author dealing with his marriage and a young child," but he doesn't need one; he's the blank canvas onto which the protagonist can project her desires, a reversal of the usual gender dynamics in literature.
John is believable as someone capable of seducing a younger woman by exploiting his position of authority, and he's fairly easy to hate, but in a way that explains why the protagonist chose him in the first place, if perhaps not why he stays with her. The protagonist's daughter, Sid, is rather disappointing in terms of what she ends up doing, but Ellen Robertson is so impressive that you sometimes forget how evil she is. Hmm, I wonder what that means for me.
All that aside, the series as a whole is quite entertaining, although it feels like we've recently seen a surprising amount of media content portraying people who have sexually abused their power in an almost sympathetic light. Flawless people, at best. Should you watch it if you have awkward memories with an older teacher? No, of course not. Should you watch it if you want some raunchy fun on your second screen? There's no reason not to, but it's definitely not as raunchy or risqué as a lot of other stuff on Netflix. Should you watch it if you want to see Rachel Weisz lose her mind over a hot younger man? Absolutely. I'd give Vladimir a solid 3 out of 5, mainly because it made me think a lot.
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