Breathe
By Sofía Guadarrama Collado
This week a miniseries (for me it's a 4-hour movie) titled Adolescence, created by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne, and directed by Philip Barantini, premiered on Netflix. A series that begins with a police raid and predicts another chapter of Law and Order or any series of the same style. However, as the first episode progresses, we begin to be amazed, because the predictions were totally wrong. This is a masterpiece.
In Chapter 1, the police burst into the Miller home to arrest 13-year-old Jamie, who is accused of murdering a schoolmate with a knife. Of course, Jamie insists on his innocence as he is taken to the police station for questioning by Inspector Luke Bascombe and Detective Misha Frank. Meanwhile, his father (Eddie), mother (Manda) and sister (Lisa) try to find solutions. Eddie, witnesses the interrogation, since his son is a minor, but, he faces the harsh reality when the inspector shows a video in which Jamie attacks the victim. Although the video shows us that Jamie is guilty, as viewers we are left with the desire that the boy is innocent.
In chapter 2, the investigators visit Jamie's school, looking for the murder weapon and other clues. However, Jamie's friends do not provide much information, but we learn that the son of Inspector Bascombe studies at the same school, but he is older than Jaime and they do not go in the same grade, but reveals that Katie had labeled on social networks Jamie as "incel", acronym of the English expression involuntary celibate. The chapter evidences the chaos inside the school, the teachers' inability to control them and the way they scold them. Jade, friend of the victim Katie, accuses Ryan of complicity, who goes on the run, is chased by the inspector and in the end confesses that the knife is his.
In Chapter 3, Jamie attends therapy with a psychologist assigned to his case named Briony Ariston. He is initially reluctant to talk, but eventually shares his complex feelings about Katie. The session is not meant to unveil whether Jamie murdered Katie or not, but to get inside this teenager's head. It is worth clarifying that each chapter is recorded in sequence shot, that is, a single take, which makes them even more complex to record, since the camera follows a protagonist and goes from one place to another without changing shots, although the actors do change, but they are the ones who enter and leave the stage and not the camera. But in chapter three, unlike the first two, everything is centered in one room and with only two actors: Erin Doherty (Briony Ariston) and Owen Cooper (Jamie Miller). Both perform powerful dialogue. The script is not to be missed.
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