'Behind her Eyes' on Netflix: You cannot make sense of it.

As you start watching the six-parts series, you know you have seen a similar character, that same bob cut hair, a default poker-face, there is a sadness yet ‘something unknown’ about Adele as it was with Amy Dunne from Gone Girl. Not only the character but the storyline seems to be familiar—the

innocent wife who stays at home while the husband works (and also has affairs, the typical portraiture of the bad husband). Adele has something mysterious about her, why does her husband have control over everything? Why does she still use a flip phone? Why does he call every hour to check upon her? Has she been in hiding, accused of a crime? We see Adele shifting from a threatened, victimized wife to a monstrous murderer. There are many questions raised, few fade away (never answered) and other make sense later in the episodes to come. The series has themes of lucid dreaming, lies, trauma and substance abuse.

Louise is the perfect depiction of the dialogue “you can never know a person entirely”—a happy-go-lucky single mom struggling to cope with her nightmares and sleepwalking. She never understood her dreams. The illustration of Louise’s nightmare land seems familiar to the realities Charlotte Perkins Gilman describes in her short story The Yellow Wallpaper, and also, the husband was a physician and here, a psychiatrist, both keeping their wives under sedatives, to keep them under control. The single mother and the lonesome wife have many things in common. Strangely, Louise’s son Adele does not seem to know about his mother’s traumas and she seems to not carry her nights into the days. The story begins when she is drawn into the strange world of Adele and David. Louise runs into David Ferguson in the first ten minutes of the pilot, waiting for them to build up (we know that it will happen!) we know that David is too frustrated with his wife or perhaps scared. He wants to be happy, to find love and to leave Adele behind but there seems to be something that ties them together. And again, I am reminded of Nick Dunne from Gone Girl. Louise also turns out to be the new-in-town doctor’s secretary!

Though, during the initial episodes of Behind Her Eyes, there seemed to be come a certain twist, the various aspects of the plotline suggest it to be a psychological twist. In flashbacks we see Adele’s friendship with Rob in the asylum; that had nothing to contribute to the story (until the very end) but to Adele’s individual character. Perhaps the storytellers could involve Rob more than just someone Adele met at the nursing home. The signs of Rob’s homosexuality were quite evident, his instant attraction to David Ferguson could not miss the camera. Rob is attracted to both Adele and David. There is a three-way love story under the lines, at play.

Adele knows how to control her lucid-dream world, she can go wherever she wishes and the cinematography is a naïve to depict the same—the top angle camera, like a hovering CCTV, a ball of light floating around spaces, something more than that could be done. Astra Projection is an out-of-body experience but is shown in a very shallow manner—count you fingers to 10 and you fall asleep to wander anywhere in real time. Adele takes the drug-ridden mantras to Louise for her to combat her nightmares and they find the door. What my brain couldn’t process was how did Louise perform Astra projections with only a few day’s practice and without any sedatives. As you come closer to the end, you realize that everything is interlinked, or perhaps that there are two people instead of three and by the end, there is one person instead of three.

While the rest of the show is smooth, slow-paced, the ending comes rushing in. Everything happens too fast and also, quiet absurdly. I could notice Rob’s homosexuality in the very instance when he looks at their photograph, and also the revelation of the Astra projection, I could join the dots and the ending did not bring much amazement with it rather a confused state of mind. I could tell Adele is Rob. Though the series could deceive the watchers with the characters and their wrong-doings, they left hints around for us to join the dots.

The question of Rob’s sexual orientation is something that has never been discussed. He is in love with David but also chooses to inhabit a female’s body. There is very little background to his character and no character arc can be seen. The initial episodes are slow paced, with not much to connect to the end, the ending seems sudden and rushed. The questions about astra projection or astra travelling remain unanswered.

The entire series hangs onto the much talked about twist which seems so abrupt that it perhaps is a little funny.