The Perfect Couple, Netflix review: Kidman is highly entertaining

The second you see Nicole Kidman in A Perfect Couple you know exactly what kind of character she’s playing. Dressed immaculately, hair done to perfection, make-up flawless; you don’t need a (French) supporting character to tell us she has a ‘stick up her arse-hole’. All of which, it goes without saying, is exactly what you want from Kidman in a murder mystery. Mess with her perfect world? You might end up floating face down in the bay.

There’s a wedding coming up and you’re definitely not invited. The Winbury family doesn’t let just anyone into their extremely lavish Cape Cod holiday home and it’s pretty obvious that perfectly normal bride-to-be Amelia (Eve Hewson) is barely scraping in. Greer Garrison Winbury (Kidman) can barely hide her distain, though she’d never be so crass as to let her mask slip in public. As for husband Tag (Liev Schreiber), he’s too busy getting stoned and playing golf to have any firm opinions – though it seems all the ladies have firm opinions on how he’s a DILF.

As for their three sons, eldest Tom (Jack Reynor) is brash, loud, constantly teasing the others and just might be in the kind of financial trouble he doesn’t want his pregnant wife Abby (Dakota Fanning) knowing about. Middle son Benji (Billy Howle) is just excited to be getting married, which is good because his bride-to-be doesn’t seem to be. And youngest son Will (Sam Nivola) just got dumped, though he insists it was mutual.

Watch The Perfect Couple trailer.

There might be a few tensions here and there, but nothing seems all that murder-worthy. Tom isn’t happy that Benji’s best friend Shooter (Ishaan Khatter) is best man instead of him; maid-of-honour Merritt (Meghann Fahy) is too much of a party girl for Greer’s tastes, but that’s hardly a shock. And Amelia’s middle-class parents are too busy dealing with her mother’s cancer to notice they’re being looked down upon. So who ends up dead, and what could they possibly have done to end up on the wrong end of a knife?

Based on a bestseller by Elin Hilderbrand, the tone here is bright, breezy and bitchy.

As the latest in a post-Knives Out run of star-studded mysteries coming out of the US, this six-part Netflix series may feature a collection of extremely rich and entitled characters but – based on the first episode at least – there’s not a whole lot of class commentary. The point here is that there’s been a murder and a lot of juicy secrets are going to come to light, not to let us in on the not-very secret secret that the wealthy rarely deserve their ill-gotten gains.

Much of the first episode is told in flashback after a body is found floating just offshore from the Winbury family’s extremely lavish beachside holiday home. The corpse’s identity remains a mystery throughout the episode – to us if not the characters. We see local police chief Dan Carter (Michael Beach) and detective Nikki Henry (Donna Lynne Champlin) interrogating a few characters (mostly the very gossipy help, who provide some great lines), but otherwise we’re left in the dark as to who’s gone and spoilt the wedding by getting themselves stabbed.

Proceedings (mostly the interrogations) occasionally threaten to tip into outright comedy. This is hardly an actor’s showcase, but that’s okay. While the younger cast get all the angst, the more mature crew (including Isabelle Adjani as a slightly surreal family friend) are here to enjoy the scenery and provide some star power. They’re hardly slumming it – Schreiber gets a nice scene where his character expresses his disappointment in one of his sons, in between moments peddling drugs to everyone around him – but their big scenes will have to wait until the mystery investigation dredges up their inevitable dark pasts.

As Greer, Kidman is a highly entertaining stick in the mud. She’s a high profile author worried that her perfect front might be crumbling, a mix of concerned mother and smiling assassin who has everyone around her low-key terrorised. A smooth but brittle surface hiding an increasingly flustered core, it’s the kind of role Kidman can handle with ease – and her ease only makes her performance more fun to watch. Whether Greer did it or not, Kidman’s killing it here.

The Perfect Couple premieres on Netflix on 5 September 2024.