‘Disclaimer’ Trailer: A Superb Cate Blanchett Tears Through Alfonso Cuarón’s Elegant Apple TV+ Adaptation

And just as strong are Leila George and Louis Partridge in the seven-part series dropping Friday, October 11.

An Italian summer holiday in the sun — what could go wrong? Well, that holiday, two decades earlier, was a particularly forbidden one for Catherine Ravenscroft — a holiday with catastrophic consequences in the present, leading to a secret she’s kept for 20 years now suddenly blown into the open as if on a coldhearted breeze.

That’s the premise of Alfonso Cuarón’s elegant Apple TV+ adaptation of “Disclaimer,” originally a page-turning 2015 novel by Renée Knight, and now a seven-part series starring a superb Cate Blanchett in one of her finest performances. Equally strong is Leila George as the younger, perhaps idealized version of Catherine in literary flashback, haunted by a brief and doomed romance with Jonathan (Louis Partridge).

In the present day, his cranky, gray-haired father (played by a cranky, gray-haired Kevin Kline) is stalking the adult Ravenscroft (Blanchett) to exact revenge for what happened to her son all those 20 years ago in Italy. Sacha Baron Cohen plays Catherine’s husband — who grows flustered after a novel inscribed to Catherine shows up on their doorstep detailing the events from two decades ago — with Kodi Smit-McPhee as her drug-addicted, detached son. Watch the official full trailer below.

The series premiere at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, where Oscar (and perhaps eventual Emmy) winners Blanchett and Cuarón described the series to IndieWire as feeling slightly “dangerous.” Cuarón also said that he treated the seven-episode series like a long movie, shooting it as he would any of his other films, from “Gravity” to “Roma.” “Probably at this stage of my life, it’s too late to learn how to direct TV,” he said at Venice.

Emmanuel Lubezki and Bruno Delbonnel split cinematography duties on “Disclaimer,” which flashes from a soul-dampened, clammy London to a more ravenous Italian seaside, and often in long takes that capture just-as-long sex acts. Or feverish, operatic runs through the street. Finneas O’Connell provides a score that feels slightly dangerous, too, especially in the series’ final hours.

The first two episodes of “Disclaimer” drop on Apple TV+ on Friday, October 11, with the rest to follow weekly. Read IndieWire’s rave review from TV critic Ben Travers here.