“Nice Face” – aired on April 8, 2018
Writer: Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Director: Harry Bradbeer
Grade: 5 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
Critics are having a ball trying to ascribe a genre to BBC America’s latest series Killing Eve and I don’t blame them. Showrunner Phoebe Waller-Bridge has indeed framed a spy thriller in a unique way that is bound to fascinate them. The story has been billed as an “epic game of game cat and mouse” by the network itself, while others have called it anything from a “spy vs. assassin” based thriller to a “dark twist on the glamorous international espionage thriller.”
In any case, judging from the pilot episode “Nice Face,” Killing Eve should dazzle viewers. There are rankings of best pilots to TV shows floating around the internet that are fun to browse through. However, if you care to actually watch one, look no further than “Nice Face.” It is brilliantly written by Waller-Bridge, well-executed by director Harry Bradbeer, and carried to perfection with fierce and efficient performances by the female-dominated cast.
The story pits two psychos against each other. Villanelle, the professional assassin played by Jodie Comer, emerges as the bad psycho, while Eve Polastri, the MI5 security officer played by Sandra Oh, portrays the good psycho, so to speak. But they are psychos in their own ways – “Nice Face” leaves us in no doubt of that reality in the first two scenes of the episode.
In a café in Vienna, Villanelle notices a little girl who is looking back at her from a neighboring table while having an ice cream with her mother. The girl’s attention turns to the bartender and they smile back and forth. Villanelle’s expression turns sour as she observes that exchange, but when the girl looks back at her and smiles, she smiles back and gets up to leave. As she walks out, she knocks the little girl’s ice cream on her lap. She exits with a sadistic smile in her face, as she hears the mother scolding the little girl behind her. I am not a big fan of too many close-up shots of actors’ faces, but here, Bradbeer makes it work so splendidly that the sequence feels violent without any actual violence in it.
The next shot is Eve screaming her lungs out in her sleep. Her husband Niko (Owen McDonnell) is panicking and trying to wake her up. Her ear-piercing screaming lasts several seconds, but Niko succeeds eventually. Eve explains rather calmly, less than two second after she wakes up, that she “fell asleep on both arms.” She adds matter-of-factly, “oh they’re coming back now.” Her husband chimes in: “You’re a freak.”
Yep, the two leads are psychos. If you still had doubts on that after the first two minutes, the rest of the episode will confirm it for you.
Wait until you see Villanelle the second time she appears, as she mocks an old woman who is struggling to walk down the stairs in her apartment building in Paris. It is obvious from the woman’s replies that Villanelle has tormented her before. You will later get to see her perform her professional duties, for good measure.
As for Eve, wait until she calmly gives her husband a lucid account of how she would proceed if she wanted to kill him, the details of which would put demented serial killers to shame. How did they start that conversation? Niko walked in on Eve while she was busy puncturing her leg with a knife – blood rolls out – in an effort to simulate a murder that she is investigating.
Oh excels in portraying Eve, the bored MI5 officer who seems obsessed with her work, notably with female assassins. She dons that universally recognizable “what?” expression to perfection – see my preview for more on that – as she cleverly digs for clues and seeks answers. Nothing escapes her attention to detail, and if necessary, she cuts corners without hesitation.
It appears that Eve has found her dream match in Villanelle. Our professional assassin lives luxuriously in Paris, surely thanks to the ample income from her line of work. Her handler is Konstantin, played by the Danish actor Kim Bodnia, and the two appear to know each other inside-out, to the point of finishing each other’s sentences.
Their two dialogues in the episode lay the ground work for understanding how Villanelle operates in her job. She is methodical, ruthless, untraceable, and effective. She is also very athletic (she climbs up the pipe of a gutter with ease to the third floor of a house) and perhaps a contortionist (she hides inside a suitcase). She completely lacks empathy and takes genuine pleasure in killing.
She also takes risks. As pointed out by the head of MI6’s Moscow operations, Carolyn Mertens (Fiona Shaw), “She is starting to show off.” Mertens is not wrong. In Tuscany, Villanelle leaves the murder weapon on the scene, firmly planted in the victim’s eye. She does not wear gloves or mind the little boy who sees her on the scene. Konstantin later expresses concern and urges her to be more diligent. He tells her to eliminate the possible witness to her earlier job, currently laying in a hospital bed.
That eventually leads to the hospital scene in which we get to fully appreciate Bradbeer’s directorial skills in a terrific sequence that begins with the focus on Eve’s face. Her expression changes to inquietude – did I say how well Oh does that? – as she senses something is deeply wrong. The camera changes and we follow her from behind. She looks inside the room and switches to panic mode. We see her rush in the room as she begins to yell. The camera approaches the open door and slowly puts on display the gruesome scene inside. The sequence is exceptionally well filmed and Oh performs wonderfully in conveying the horror she is feeling as she tries to revive the patient in the following shot.
Eve’s penchant for cutting corners ultimately catches up with her and her boss Bill (David Haig). They get fired by Frank (Darren Boyd), Bill’s superior, in a subtly humorous scene that will bring you a whole new appreciation for the insult “dick-swab” and will have Mertens deliver the funniest line of the episode to Frank – “Clearly, there is going to be some reshuffling in your department” – in the flattest tone possible.
The episode makes it clear that Villanelle and Eve are on a collision course. They even come face to face, in a quasi-silent but powerful bathroom scene, each without yet knowing who the other one is.
The background music, the locations, and the guest stars of international backgrounds contribute to a five-star pilot in an episode that will leave you yearning for next Sunday to arrive rapidly. It is evident that women lead the way here. Eve, her colleague Elena (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), and Mertens will be chasing Villanelle throughout the next seven episodes. “Nice Face” includes scenes from Vienna, Paris, London, and Tuscany, and apparently with more to come, we gladly tag along for the ride.
Last-minute thoughts:
– Interesting that they could not cast a Frenchwoman for the role of the old woman in the stairs when, unless I am mistaken, they had all other guest stars speaking in native language. Or is that nit-picking? Actually, it is.
– What was Kasia on during the interrogation scene? Wow!
– I love how every minute detail is meticulously considered by the writers and the director. Eve faking the “poor thing” line and telling the guard to get Kasia some tea, so she could interrogate her without his presence, is brilliant! Villanelle, carefully flattening out the bed spread before laying on it to add to her methodical and obsessive nature, is also brilliant!
– When the writing and the directing are phenomenal, you don’t need lines by characters to feed viewers information so that they understand what is happening. Nor do you need their monologues to hold them by the hand. You show them, they get it. That is what “Nice Face” does, that is how good TV works.
– A lot of Polish was spoken in the episode, but I only retained one expression: “ale decha.”
– Speaking of ale decha, Elena telling Eve on the phone that the female killer on file “appears to have massive, pendulous breasts” and then asking her, “Does that do it for you?”, is the second funniest moment of the episode.
– In case you missed it, BBC America has made “Nice Face” available on its website.
– Apparently, the network feels so confident about Killing Eve that it has already given it the green light for a second season.
Until next episode…