Review: Natalie Portman excels as Maddie Schwartz in 'Lady in the Lake'
The series unfortunately never emerges as something more than a valiant effort.
"A cracking good mystery with the story of a not always admirable woman working to stand on her own."
Stephen King wrote those admiring words for his New York Times review of "Lady in the Lake." Not the limited series now streaming on Apple TV+, but the 2019 Laura Lippman novel it's based on. Yet even with Oscar winner Natalie Portman in her starring TV debut, the seven-part series is often a chaotic mess. It's the heat and heart of its ambition that's undeniable.
Portman excels as Maddie Schwartz, an unhappy Jewish housewife who leaves her husband (Brett Gelman) to pursue a career as a journalist amid the racial tensions festering in mid-1960s Baltimore. Maddie's attention is laser focused on two murders: that of 11-year-old Jewish girl Tessie Fine (Bianca Belle) and Black activist and single mother Cleo Sherwood (Moses Ingram).
It's the disembodied voice of Cleo we hear first: "Alive, I was Cleo Johnson, but in my death I became the Lady in the Lake." When her body is found clogging the drain in a lake fountain, Cleo becomes a tabloid sensation that Maddie shamelessly exploits to further her own career.
In defiance of her controlling husband, Maddie makes do in a dingy apartment in a mostly Black Baltimore slum that repulses her snob son Seth (Noah Jupe) on the infrequent times he pays mom a visit. Maddie's less admirable qualities include sleeping around for a story, as she does by seducing young Black cop Ferdie Platt (an outstanding Y'lan Noel).
Still, Maddie persists with the Lady in the Lake story, even when her columnist mentor Bob Bauer (Pruitt Taylor Vince) claims it wouldn't interest white readers. But Maddie is pushed by her landlord's pothead teen daughter Judith Weinstein, played by a knockout Mikey Madison in a warmup for her Oscar-buzzed performance in "Anora" this fall.
The acting in "Lady in the Lake" is top tier, with Portman finding her match in Ingram, an Emmy nominee for "Queen's Gambit," who lights up the screen with her co-star, though the two rarely share a scene. They'll keep you riveted to this tale of two single mothers fighting for their place in a world controlled by men and the pressure of racial assimilation.
There's no denying the good intentions that pave this road to hell. Directed and co-written by first-time showrunner Alma Har'el, the gifted Israeli American filmmaker behind "Bombay Beach" and "Honey Boy," "Lady in the Lake" always seems on the verge of coming apart at the seams.
Much attention is paid to Cleo's criminal boss (she does his books), the drug-addicted blues singer in his club and her estrangement from her son's father, a standup comic battling personal demons. We also dig into Maddie's secret past, the real paternity of her son and her rebellion against the conservative Jewish traditions that helped form her.
In trying to cram in every detail from Lippman's novel, the series too often loses track of the flawed, fascinating women at its core. What works in a novel, the intersection of multiple themes and characters, feels rushed and muddled even over seven hours of screen time.
At the approach of an easily guessed twist ending, Portman and Ingram restore some of the power inherent in watching two bloody but unbowed women learn to stand on their own. Sadly, "Lady in the Lake" never emerges as something more substantial than a valiant effort, a haunting story haltingly told.
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