“Olhar Indiscreto”: Netflix erotic series is very bad

“Olhar Indiscreto”, a Brazilian miniseries that arrives on Netflix on the first day of 2023, doesn’t even try to hide its immediate reference, “Janela Rear” (1954), by Alfred Hitchcock. The problem is that, like the recent works inspired by one of the British director’s classics (“The Voyeurs”, “A Mulher da Janela”, “A Garota do Trem”, among others), the plot starring Debora Nascimento and Emanuelle Araújo suffers from a bad script, despite the well-intentioned execution.

The miniseries has Miranda (Débora Nascimento) as its protagonist, a solitary specialist in digital security whose hobby is spying on the neighbor Cléo (Emanuelle Araújo), a call girl who receives her clients at home. The series opens on December 31, with a voiceover from Miranda saying she fell in love with two men in the past year, but now one of them is dead. It doesn’t take long for a masked man to invade her house apparently to murder her.

The text then goes back to the beginning of this great confusion, three months before, when we got to know Miranda a little more and discovered the true obsession she has for the neighbor’s life, establishing her routine according to Cléo’s schedule. One day, however, everything changes; the call girl travels for work and needs Miranda to take care of her dog, with trips to her house, as the pet would be surprised by a sudden change of environment.

Alone in the house that she watched so much, Miranda fantasizes about everything she has followed lately. The problem is that some clients soon appear, among them Fernando (Nikolas Antunes), a handsome billionaire for whom Miranda had already developed a long-distance attraction. Of course, the two end up getting involved after an unforgettable first meeting.

It’s almost interesting, at this point, how the script tries to de-glamorize Cléo’s profession. Shortly after the meeting with Fernando, another customer appears, a not very pleasant guy knocks on the door in order to have sex, but this contrast does not appear to be intentional. Netflix had initially released two episodes to the press, but this text is being written after all episodes have been made available and watched. This information is important to reinforce the predictability of the series, because, despite countless ridiculous turns, the final idea is not difficult to predict, even with all the absurd turns that the miniseries takes.

“Olhar Indiscreto” tries to give depth to Miranda, who may or may not be developing Huntington’s Disease, an incurable hereditary disease that affects reasoning and cognition capacity. The text uses this to be didactic to the extreme, with the protagonist recording memories and memories all the time. Furthermore, Miranda constantly comments on what we are seeing on screen, wiping out any subjectivity in the script and giving the narrative an excess of exposure.

The miniseries tries to develop other plots in parallel and gets lost when trying to connect everything. This is largely due to the poor script and the artificiality of some performances, such as that of the Portuguese actor ngelo Rodrigues, who plays Heitor, another of Cléo’s clients whose private life is intertwined with the main plot and the life of the protagonist.

Heitor lives with Miranda and Fernando in a classic love triangle. The protagonist ends up in doubt between Fernando’s security and good manners and the risk of the “dangerous” Heitor, who the script tries to construct from the beginning as an antagonist.

The text uses Miranda’s “hacker” talent as a solution to everything; if a new character appears, the protagonist quickly finds out who she is and what connection she has with the rest of the plot – all of this, of course, narrating in her head everything that is being displayed on screen. The same goes for solving several other conflicts immediately, without giving them weight and already putting the plot in another mode.

Worse than that is the fact that the script underestimates the spectator’s intelligence and even goodwill with his connections and coincidences. The text always looks for the easiest way out to cause surprise, but never develops the twists so that the viewer feels part of the revelation, they are simply played in any way in the hope of surprising and to put the series in another direction. This is also reinforced by the caricatured performance of the police in the crimes of the series, which always end up in investigations to make an impact, but without ever getting anywhere.

“Olhar Indiscreto” suffers from a bad direction and/or a run over edition (the orgy scene is completely chopped up). The series offers a lot of ideas, a lot of characters, and it doesn’t seem quite sure what to make of it all. It’s like they thought of three seasons and squished it all together into ten episodes of about 35 minutes each. In this way, the narrative sacrifices any weight, making the deaths of some characters mere details, crutches depending on new turns, as it depends on these events to set everything in motion.

Some of these turns, it is worth noting, are simply laughable, more due to the poor execution than the idea itself – if well crafted, Cléo’s turns, for example, could at least be taken seriously. Emanuelle Araújo’s character spends much of the plot as a detail; it’s curious how the first two episodes work her as a co-protagonist, with some sense of urgency, to then leave her forgotten for three or four episodes. The final episode, longer than the others, explains everything in detail, in case someone missed something with all the didacticism of the narrative.

A miniseries with a strong erotic touch in its essence, “Olhar Indiscreto” is based on the beauty and talent of Débora Nascimento. It is she who seems to surrender to the forbidden and dangerous sense that a plot of the genre needs, but she is never accompanied by her scene partners. Director Luciana Oliveira’s gaze is interesting, deconstructing the male pornographic gaze and betting on an eroticization under the gaze of a woman, always placing the female characters in positions of desire, power and control. It is important to emphasize that the production team was formed mostly by women and had an intimacy coordinator on set.

In the end, “Olhar Indiscreto” is very bad. The miniseries embraces all possible crutches in a plot that resembles the worst rocambolesque Mexican telenovelas (which at least have more time to tell the story), a text that tries to take steps beyond its narrative capacity and stumbles badly.

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