We All Have Secrets

She remembered something a woman in Paris had told her once. A woman in her forties, much married, elegant, a little world-weary. There is nothing easier in this world, this woman had claimed, than getting a man to kiss you. Oh really? Eva had said, so how do you do that? Just stand close to a man, the woman has said, very close, as close as you can without touching - he will kiss you in one minute or two. It's inevitable. For them it's like an instinct - they can't resist. Infaillible...

It is no accident that Sundance Channel will premiere the first segment of its two-part World War II female espionage miniseries Restless on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack Dec. 7, with the conclusion debuting Dec. 14, both airing at 9 p.m. Based on the novel by acclaimed British novelist William Boyd, who also wrote the teleplay, Restless is based on a little-known chapter of espionage history when prior to the Japanese attack in 1941, most Americans were sturdy isolationists with no inclination to be drawn into the war raging in Europe. The British government assigned a secret intelligence cell to manipulate U.S. news media and opinion leaders with disinformation suggesting Germany planned to attack America. The miniseries was filmed in South Africa and the U.K. and boasts a trio of amazing leading ladies in the shape of Hayley Atwell, Michelle Dockery and Charlotte Rampling; as well as Rufus Sewell and Michael Gambon.

Restless starts off like a pleasant British travelogue, with a pretty graduate student motoring along country roads to her mother’s cottage outside a quaint village. The year is 1976. Ruth, now studying for her Ph.D., has been a free spirit without much contact with her mother, getting pregnant out of wedlock in Germany and keeping that little secret for years. Turns out everybody in Restless has a pretty big secret. The camera, riding in the car and then soaring above it, captures the leafy splendor of the rural scene but also conveys a sense of menace and isolation, slightly skewing the horizon and showing us the lonely house dwarfed by towering trees.

Having deftly established its Penny Lane world in just a few shots, the film stands it on its head. The atmosphere of minor-key dread continues as the younger woman arrives to find her mother is not waiting in the kitchen with a tray of scones; she’s out back, in an agitated state, scanning the tree line for intruders with an antique telescope. Her greeting is anything but maternal: "Did anybody follow you?" So begins a delicious excursion into paranoia and surrealism. Ruth Gilmartin (Dockery) is about to learn that her mother, Sally (Rampling), is no dotty old gardener but a gone-to-ground spy whose real name is Eva Delectorskaya, still hiding out after walking a trail of treachery and murder three decades earlier. Now, Eva fears, the chickens hatched during her days in the secret service have come home to roost in those trees. People are watching her, she says. Ruth, of course, thinks her mother is imagining things. But on a whim she picks up the telescope and looks into the woods when her mother is away and sees the shadow of a man. And, inexorably, Ruth is drawn into her footsteps.


A joint production with the BBC and Sundance, Restless reveals Sally’s history to Ruth and the audience on a need-to-know basis, bouncing back and forth between 1939 and 1976. Introducing Eva’s wartime collaborators amid Europe’s politics during the first years of the war could have muddled the project quickly, but the script, directed by Edward Hall (Spooks) succeeds — as long as proper attention is paid. So it is we are introduced to Hayley Atwell, fresh from playing a superhuman soldier confounding the Nazis in “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Here she once again puts on the smart, World War II-era wardrobe that suits her so well, as the young Eva beginning her journey as a Russian emigré in Paris. When her brother is murdered by fascists, a British agent recruits her, sweeping her into a fascinating whirlwind of intense schooling. When she asks her mentor Lucas Romer (Sewell) what to do without a firearm in dangerous situations, he tells her, "Use your intuition. Use your animal instincts."

It’s also a romance, with Lucas seducing his recruit in the calculated, reticent manner that only the British can get away with. Despite the distractions of her affair, Eva sharpens her skills as an operative during this often-overlooked period. Flashbacks show her in spy mode, working for her boss alongside a cadre of colleagues; including Morris Devereux (Adrian Scarborough), who cautions Eva, "When it looks like a Grade A, incontestable, unmistakable suicide, it probably isn't." Before the United States joined the Allied forces, a desperate Britain was playing every card in the deck to try to sway public opinion in isolationist America. Eva plants international news reports for a while, but parts of her training — call them trash cans, not dust bins — make it obvious she’s headed stateside.

When she arrives in the fall of 1941, as far as the FDR’s America is concerned, she is the enemy, an invader on U.S. soil who must dodge the FBI as well as agents from other countries. None of them know that the Japanese will soon save the British a lot of trouble. What was billed as a routine courier job in New Mexico puts Eva’s life on the line, and her immediate suspicions reveal a true talent for the game. Restless doesn’t cheapen her adventure with extended shootouts or explosions, let alone James Bond-style car chases and nifty gadgets. Eva has no one she can turn to. Her wits are her only weapon.

With or without guns, we know Eva survives the war, because we’ve already met her as a recent widow living in a countryside cottage straight out of Howards End. But her days have none of the afternoon teas or petty class concerns of an E.M. Forster novel. She’s been looking over her shoulder, living for decades with her identity successfully hidden, but now someone is watching her. The forceful Sally is not about to play defence with the shadowy figures skulking in her woods. She makes the decision to confide in her grown daughter, who is understandably incredulous. “Suddenly I’m half-Russian?” Ruth says, before her mother shocks her further by speaking her native language over coffee. After a few scary encounters of her own, Ruth quickly realizes that Mum might be paranoid, but that doesn’t mean no one’s after her.

Ever since a photo ran with her late husband's memorial announcement in the paper, she has been especially fearful for her life, constantly looking over her shoulder and into the distance through a spyglass. She purchases a shotgun for protection. What's a good daughter to do? Help Mum, of course. Ruth and Sally put their heads together to track down the one man who can end her anxious waiting and watching: Eva's former lover and spymaster, who now goes by the alias Baron Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve (Gambon).

Thus Restless weaves back and forth on two story tracks: The tale of Eva’s espionage career in the 1930s, and her conviction that her spy days have returned to haunt her in the 1970s. Her daughter finally accepts the truth of the former, but is skeptical of the latter. "The war’s been over for 30 years, for God’s sake," Ruth chides her mother. "Why are you carrying on with all this cloak and dagger stuff?" Soon, though, she realizes her mother has become her spymaster, running her as an agent against enemies who may be daffily imaginary or lethally genuine. Ruth, a self-sufficient single mother in her own right, eventually puts herself in harm’s way to help Sally solve her final puzzle. But at the end, she can only watch as her mother manages her own affairs, shotgun in hand. After years of cryptic exchanges in hotel lobbies, gunfire in the dark woods and pillows used as silencers, Eva has learned her lessons, and she passes them on to her daughter: Trust no one else. Trust only your instincts.

Ultimately, the uncommon acuity of Boyd’s script is immeasurably bolstered by the outstanding female cast. Restless might be the rare TV show that wins acting awards for two women playing the same role. Atwell is a marvel of nuance as the reluctant Mata Hari with a romantic core who- nonetheless- kills effortlessly and (almost) remorselessly; shedding character skins — innocent schoolgirl, ruthless spy, befuddled dupe — as naturally as a snake. At first wide-eyed, Eva blossoms with her training. She’s a natural. Atwell gives her an earnestness that’s fresh for a spy story, but she’s also able to convince the audience that Eva’s cunning and determination are what separate her from the pack- not some badass attitude. Besides, Eva is in a part of the agency that disseminates information to manipulate the press- and thus the Germans and Russians, so it’s not like she’s Jason Bourne.

Restless deftly switches between the early '40s and 1976, and much of that has to do with Rampling’s superb performance as Sally. Returning to the World War II epoch that made her a star in The Damned and The Night Porter, Rampling imbues the older Eva/Sally with the manipulative skills and paranoia that accumulate over a lifetime of spying. Once the veil of country widower is lifted and we know she’s a former spy, it only hammers home the fact that she was a damned good one and - for reasons viewers must wait on - is still in danger at her advanced age. Dockery also is impressive in her convincing portrayal of a woman whose world is turned upside down. Liberated from the Edwardian costumery and soap-opera theatricality of her role as the shrill Lady Mary in Downton Abbey, she turns out to be both subtle and shapely as Ruth, buffeted by a dawning awareness that her mother is a complete stranger. "We all have secrets," Eva comforts her. "Everyone. No one even knows half the truth about anybody else."

In Ruthless, make that a tenth.