TIFF Day 3

Film Recommendation / YOU – Season One (2018)

If you haven’t seen this series, you are doing yourself a disservice. It’s funny, and dark, and moving. It’s well written, and well made. Despite being a signal flare, a warning of the general threat posed by social media, ‘You,‘ is deeply compelling. It’s a story, in some ways, about unpleasant surprises.

‘You,‘ plays on some big ideas. It takes an approach both micro and macro. It explores identity, agency, personal history, culture, dark undercurrents, and place in the world. It’s about boundaries — those we hold, those we transgress, and those we discover. As the series progresses, we are prompted to recognize the difference between the roles we are assigned and the identity we choose. Tough questions to grapple with.

Character is the touchstone here. A character can be a an archetype, caricature, or a comforting lie. Character may exist as environment, as cipher, as memory. Often, a story’s character will function as a prism through which we can view some part of our own identity, drawing us closer to the perspective a writer is sharing. We’ve all asked ourselves, ‘Who am I in this story?’