Was the #MeToo movement an obstruction to actual repentance and remorse? By hauling wrongdoers into the public square, where they would inevitably seek to minimize their crimes, did the crusade eliminate the possibility of private atonement? Though even to ask such questions is an act of political provocation, Netflix’s Two Summers, aka Twee Zomers, manages to do so without giving the least offense.
This is, to be clear, no great victory. Were the Belgian series only slightly more courageous, it might have taken its place among the finest dramas of the year. Created by the Flemish production house Panenka, Two Summers begins in Silicon Valley, where harmless layabout Peter (Tom Vermeir) is preparing to vacation with Romee (An Miller), his tech maven wife. Joining the couple on their stunning private island will be a quintet of old chums who have known their hosts, and one another, for more than 30 years. Yet despite the paradisal setting, the friends’ reunion promises to be something other than a long weekend’s idyll. In the summer of 1992, the group’s then-adolescent boys assaulted one of its girls as she slept off a drug-induced oblivion. Now, video of the rape has surfaced, Peter is being blackmailed, seemingly by one of the lifelong pals with whom he is about to sequester himself for several days.
Like Showtime’s Yellowjackets, another contemporary thriller that spreads its plot across dueling timelines, Two Summers is a curious mashup of influences and styles. In its early going, as Peter considers which of his mates is the likely traitor, the program is reminiscent of nothing so much as Agatha Christie’s island whodunnit And Then There Were None. (Note the visual reminders that a flimsy lifeboat is the only way back to the mainland.) Later, when the show turns its attention to the vagaries of middle-aged desire, one can’t help recalling The Ice Storm (1997), Ang Lee’s chronicle of midlife sexual intrigue. While Netflix’s series will put many viewers in mind of The Big Chill (1983), that greatest of all getting-the-gang-back-together dramas, others will sense behind its machinations the ill spirit of the Kavanaugh hearings, a made-for-TV production par excellence. Among Peter’s fellow perpetrators is the government minister Stef Van Gompel (Koen De Bouw), known to his intimates as Mowgli. Though all of the men have something to lose if exposed, it is Mowgli who most clearly embodies the archetype of the powerful man chased by a dark secret.
As for the identity of the blackmailer, there is, quite literally, a motive around every corner. Luk (Kevin Janssens), the only young man who didn’t participate in the crime, is far poorer than his friends and might rightly hold them in disdain for their actions. So might Saskia (Ruth Becquart), Luk’s ex-wife and the possessor of secrets of her own. For Sofie (Inge Paulussen), the assault’s actual victim, the night in question is veiled in shadows, yet perhaps she remembers more than she admits. And if Sofie is a suspect, why not her husband, Didier (Herwig Ilegems), who watched the assault unfold, did nothing to stop it, and could very well be trying to avenge his wife’s honor in the present, whatever the cost to himself?
Given the care with which Two Summers assembles its list of suspects, one might expect the program to hit the beats of a detective story, scattering bodies in its wake and teasing its audience with near-constant clues. Instead, and surprisingly, the show does no such thing, choosing instead a subtler path in which relationships are key and the extortion narrative is forgotten for entire stretches. Having been rejected by Saskia 30 years earlier, a middle-aged Mowgli pursues her with uncommon tenderness and devotion in the here and now. (Both De Bouw and the actor who plays Mowgli in ’92 are excellent.) A subplot concerning Didier’s lingering shame is wholly compelling but bears not a trace of resemblance to the detective yarn that Two Summers seems, in the first and second episodes, to want to be. Needless to say, these fragments of the series’s identity sit uneasily together at the best of times. At the worst, as when the men huddle endlessly to speculate about their tormentor, the show seems willfully to be abandoning the intricate interpersonal narratives that serve it so well.
To put it another way, Two Summers works splendidly when it explores mature romance and the nature of guilt and forgiveness. It fails when it transmutes its plot elements into a cheap puzzler. As previously hinted, there is an element of cowardice at play in this design. Having dared to imply that its male characters are undeserving of public ruination, the series is unwilling to take another step and attach ambiguity to the crime itself — or to the question of Sofie’s consent. The result is a show that must find its mysteries elsewhere. If, as extended flashbacks make clear, what happened in 1992 is unequivocal, perhaps the unmasking of a blackmailer can serve as a handy dramatic substitute.
Finally, there is the matter of narrative coherence. Upon its arrival, the answer to the plot’s riddle is not only derivative (again, see Christie) but at odds with what we have come to understand about the island’s temporary inhabitants. How could “X” have done “Y” while knowing “Z” all along? Doesn’t “A” preclude “B” in this instance?
Because a moving examination of sin and absolution lies beneath the potboiler fat, Two Summers is worth a look despite its many flaws. One wonders, however, what the show might have been in better hands. My guess: something special indeed.
Graham Hillard is managing editor of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Washington Examiner magazine contributing writer.
