ELLE FANNING IN HULU’S ‘THE GIRL FROM PLAINVILLE’: TV REVIEW
First Published on HollywoodReporter.com
THE ACTRESS STARS AS MICHELLE CARTER, THE MASSACHUSETTS TEEN WHO WAS CONVICTED OF INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER FOR TEXTS ENCOURAGING THE SUICIDE OF HER BOYFRIEND, CONRAD ROY III (COLTON RYAN).
When Michelle Carter (Elle Fanning) learns that involuntary manslaughter charges are about to be brought against her in the fourth episode of Hulu’s The Girl From Plainville, she pleads with her lawyer (Michael Mosley) to let the authorities hear her out: “Just let me tell my side.”
Eventually, the lawyer talks her out of taking the stand, and Michelle spends most of her own trial sitting silently by while others speak for or about her. But The Girl From Plainville feels like a solemn attempt to honor that first instinctive request, digging beyond the most salacious details to unearth a compassionate and devastating portrait of two teens in trouble.
Creators Liz Hannah and Patrick Macmanus have based their miniseries on the 2017 Esquire piece of the same title by Jesse Barron, but odds are good much of the audience will be familiar with the basics whether or not they’ve come across that particular article. In 2014, Carter’s boyfriend, Conrad Roy III (played in the show by Colton Ryan), was found to have died by suicide. Shortly thereafter, local police discovered Carter had been egging him on via text messages and phone calls in the days and minutes leading up to his death. She was indicted in 2015, at which point the story exploded all over the media.
Initially, The Girl From Plainville seems to lean into the contemporaneous popular understanding of Michelle as a manipulative monster. The first episode, directed by Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right, Olive Kitteridge), is shot through with the uneasy feeling that something is off about Michelle, even if it’s not quite clear what. In the immediate aftermath of Conrad’s death, Michelle ingratiates herself with his mother, Lynn (a ferocious Chloë Sevigny), who had no idea her son had a girlfriend at all; at home, Michelle demands attention from her own family and friends, many of whom had never heard her so much as mention Conrad before his passing.