Rosemary's Baby (miniseries)

Rosemary's Baby
Promotional poster
Based on	Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
Written by	Scott Abbott James Wong
Directed by	Agnieszka Holland
Starring	Zoe Saldana Patrick J. Adams Jason Isaacs Carole Bouquet
Music by	Antoni Komasa-Lazarkiewicz
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of episodes	2
Production
Producer(s)	Joshua D. Maurer Alixandre Witlin David A. Stern Zoe Saldana Cisely Saldana Mariel Saldana Tom Patricia Robert Bernacchi
Cinematography	Michel Amathieu
Editor(s)	Amy E. Duddleston Brian Berdan
Running time	240 minutes
Production company(s)	City Entertainment KippSter Entertainment Lionsgate Television
Distributor	NBC
Release
Original network	NBC
Original release	May 11, 2014 (Part 1) May 15, 2014 (Part 2)
Chronology
Preceded by	Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary's Baby is a 2014 two-part, four-hour television miniseries adaptation of Ira Levin's best-selling horror novel of the same name. Zoe Saldana stars in the NBC production that is directed by Agnieszka Holland.^[1][2] Unlike earlier versions, it is set in Paris rather than New York. The work was not well received by critics, many of whom said that it was stretched to fill two two-hour timeslots. Although there are several notable changes, this miniseries is considered to be a fairly true updating of the original film adaptation.

Cast

• Zoe Saldana as Rosemary Woodhouse
• Patrick J. Adams as Guy Woodhouse
• Jason Isaacs as Roman Castevet
• Carole Bouquet as Margaux Castevet
• Christina Cole as Julie
• François Civil as Jacques
• Frédéric Pierrot as Father Tekem

Plot

After suffering a miscarriage, Rosemary (Zoe Saldana) and Guy (Patrick J. Adams) Woodhouse leave New York City for Paris, hoping to make a fresh start. A series of serendipitous events lead them to befriend affluent couple Margaux (Carole Bouquet) and Roman Castevet (Jason Isaacs). The couple were invited by their new friends to attend a glamorous party where they were introduced to other high-profiled guests, and as a gift for the newfound friendship, they were also given a black cat as a new pet. While Guy finds the Castevets strange at first, Rosemary welcomes their warm affection especially since she's a foreigner in a place that's unfamiliar to her. The night after the party, a fire starts in their place and Guy is burned. However, when he is brought to the hospital, the doctor finds he only sustained minor injuries despite Rosemary's description of the fire being huge enough to cause more severe ones. Guy and Rosemary's friend, Julie (Christina Cole), invites them to stay in her place, but the Castevets offer their beautiful and spacious apartment building for free.

While in the apartment, Rosemary finds a hidden closet and some evidence that a young couple also lived in there. Meanwhile, Guy suffers from writer's block, and blames this to his stress due to inability to financially support Rosemary. Julie offers him to apply in the university she is working, though he has to compete with a well-published author. A few days after Rosemary suspiciously witnesses Roman talking to Guy, the author vying for the same job he wants has a psychotic break down during her interview. This opens the position for Guy, who reluctantly goes for it.

Rosemary experiences weird dreams of falling from the window and other sorts of nightmares. Bothered about what happened to the couple who used to rent their apartment, she goes to one of the Castavet's new friends, Commissioner Fontaine (Olivier Rabourdin), where he learns that the woman, Nena (Victoire Bélézy) committed suicide. Fontaine reassures Rosemary that he will investigate further while Rosemary confronts Margaux about Nena. Margaux tells her that she treated her like the daughter she never had and that she and her husband seemed happy, but their marriage was falling apart. With the help of Julie, Rosemary finds Nena's priest, who claims that the apartment building has a dark past, and one of its tenants is a Satanist billionaire named Steven Marcato who eats women's hearts. The priest hangs himself soon after, which prompts Fontaine to further investigate.

Not long after Guys lands the teaching position, his writer's block disappears and he begins to write and finish his book, which becomes a huge success. He suggests to Rosemary that they try to get her pregnant again which Rosemary accepts. The couple goes out with the Castevets on a celebratory dinner, when a stranger menacingly approaches them. The man tells Roman he wants what is his, followed by shooting him in the chest. Fontaine happens to be in the scene and shoots the guy in the back. In interviewing Margaux and the Woodhouses about the crime, Fontaine informs them that the attacker might survive. Guy tells him that he had never seen the stranger, though this is a lie since the same person approached him at work. Guy recognizes this man as Nena's husband and that she had committed suicide in their apartment. Roman manages to survive, but Margaux performs a ritual that causes the attacker's surgery go awry, thus killing him.

The time comes when Rosemary and Guy try having sex to conceive. In a dream-like, state Rosemary sees herself having sex with a strange man she keeps seeing from their building, while being watched by Guy, Margaux, Roman, and the Castevets' friends. Weeks later Rosemary learns she's pregnant. Margaux and Roman start helping Rosemary with her pregnancy, giving her a locket of herbs for good luck, and providing her with smoothies of herbs and spices that they claim to be beneficial for the baby. They also recommend a renowned Obstetrician, Dr. Sapirstein to attend to Rosemary. However, her health deteriorates and she's neglected by Guy, who is reluctant to touch Rosemary and has been spending more time with Roman. Guy is angered when he learns Rosemary has gone to visit another doctor, as encouraged by her friend Julie, telling her that she should trust her, while Rosemary expresses her frustration that he can't understand that there is something wrong with the pregnancy. Despite this huge argument, Julie keeps trying to convince Rosemary to seek a second opinion. This prompts Guy to visit Julie and secretly takes her crucifix necklace; not long afterward Julie dies in a kitchen accident. After the funeral, Rosemary's constant pains suddenly disappear, and the rest of the pregnancy proceeds well.

Late into the pregnancy, Fontaine is still investigating the Marcato case and warns Rosemary to keep her eyes open, warning her that Nena was pregnant when she died. Rosemary discovers a secret door in their closet which leads to a study containing books on the occult. Rosemary takes one of the books, which is about witchcraft and contains a handwritten "It's an anagram!" above a page on Steven Marcato. Rosemary shares her suspicions with Guy that Roman Castevet is Steven Marcato, and that the Castevets are witches with sinister designs on their baby, but Guy insists she's being paranoid. After an argument, she seemingly convinces her to leave with her. While searching for their passports Rosemary discovers Julie's crucifix necklace and suspects that Guy is part of the conspiracy.

Rosemary sneaks out of the apartment to meet Fontaine, who was at the moment interrogating Roman about the deaths of their previous building tenants. Roman bribes Fontaine, who pretends to go along. He then rushes to meet Rosemary to tell her he has confirmed the Castevets' involvement, but he gets hit by a truck. Rosemary goes to see Dr. Bernard (Oisin Stack), the doctor that Julie recommended, and panickedly tells him about the situation. Dr. Bernard allows her to rest in his clinic but calls Guy to tell him he thinks Rosemary is delusional. Rosemary is taken back to her apartment where she has a panic attack and is sedated just as she goes into labor. She wakes up three days later in the hospital and is told that the baby has died and its body cremated. After being discharged, Rosemary leaves Guy and declares that she's going back to New York, spreading the baby's ashes in the river.

While packing her things in the apartment, Rosemary hears a baby's cries and starts lactating. She goes through the secret door to the Castevets' apartment, where she finds Guy, the Castevets and their friends standing around a crib containing her baby. Guys tries to reason with Rosemary that the Castevets and their coven have done so much for them and can do even more, and Rosemary can just pretend that she had another miscarriage. Rosemary threatens him with a knife and spits in his face, then looks at her baby. She is disturbed by the baby's demonic eyes, and is told that its father is Satan and not Guy, and the baby is their Prince. Rosemary tries to kill the baby, but Roman encourages her to love him and take care of him since she is still his mother. She then drops the knife, then lifts her son out of the crib to nurse him.

The film ends with Rosemary pushing her son in a pram, and when passersby admire the baby, she says, "He's perfect."

Production

Zoe Saldana plays the lead character, Rosemary Woodhouse

Saldana signed on to the project on January 8, 2014.^[3] Director Holland was a three-time Academy Award nominee and the original film had earned Academy Award nominations.^[1] Saldana signed on with the expectations that fans of the original would not like the adaptation, but she was lured by the Paris setting and more importantly the opportunity to live and work in Paris for three months.^[4] Jason Isaacs and Patrick J. Adams joined the cast on January 20.^[5] Holland's daughter Kasia Adamik served as the second unit director.^[6] Scott Abbott and James Wong wrote the 2014 adaptated screenplay.^[6]

Unlike the novel and movie, the miniseries is set and shot in Paris rather than New York City.^[1][7] While the new adaptation was bloodier than the original movie version, it attempted to be more sophisticated by touching on themes such as "post-feminist meditation on the loss of control that women feel with pregnancy and on the seduction of money and power".^[6] Whereas the original movie used the Omaha native housewife transplanted in New York City, the new adaptation presented Saldana's Rosemary as a ballet dancer who was the primary wage-earner and who left New York after a miscarriage to start over in Paris with her husband during his one-year teaching job at the Sorbonne.^[6][8]

Episodes

Reception

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the show held a 31% approval rating with an average score of 4.8/10, based on 35 reviews. The consensus read: "Although the Parisian setting and special effects are impressive, this Rosemary's Baby remake resorts to sensationalism and gore." At Metacritic, the show had a score of 51 out of 100, based on 27 reviews, which indicates a "mixed or average" response.^[11][12]

Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times, who called the miniseries a "surprisingly clever remake", felt that the choice of Paris as the setting was not only "one of the best things" about the remake, but it works well with the theme of conflict with neighbors. Furthermore, she noted that it was reasonable that Rosemary (Zoe Saldana) would be naive and dependent because of her unfamiliarity with Paris as a newcomer.^[13] Stanley wrote that the host couple, French sophisticates Margaux (Carole Bouquet) and Roman Castevet (Jason Isaacs), were completely different from the one in Roman Polanski's original.^[13] Although she said the adaptation took liberties with the source material, James Poniewozik of Time said the adaptation "keeps its essential shape and plot" in comparison to the original film, an opinion shared by Hank Stuever of The Washington Post, who wrote that the new adaptation was "surprisingly and even satisfyingly true to the old movie".^[8][13][14] Poniewozik stated that although director Holland had successfully directed complex and lively episodes of The Wire and Treme, this adaptation was "leaden and slack", which may have been due to an attempt to fill two two-hour time slots.^[14] Stuever also wrote that it was "way too long", and added that the show lacked suspense.^[8] Poniewozik characterized Rosemary and Guy (Patrick J. Adams) as "anesthetically generic" without a "complex relationship"; he likened the miniseries to a "lifestyle show" that becomes a "slasher movie". Despite some "redeeming notes", he ultimately called it "too dull".^[14] Stuever noted that the 2014 adaptation was set in "the hyper-aware boutique pregnancy" era, and pointed out one modernization that eased Rosemary's burden: Google image searches on Satan.^[8] David Bianculli of NPR felt the shift to Paris was unnecessary and that the adaptation was "neither refreshing nor original"; he summed it up as "just dreadful". He described Saldana's Rosemary as more appealing but no smarter than Mia Farrow's.^[15]

References

External links

• Official website
• Rosemary's Baby at the Internet Movie Database
• Rosemary's Baby at TV.com
• Rosemary's Baby at Rotten Tomatoes
• Rosemary's Baby at Metacritic