Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Netflix’s latest original foreign drama, Edha, gives us a deadly class war in the heart of a Buenos Aires fashion house. The soapy Argentine show focuses on a sprawling ensemble of designers, investors, muses, and drug dealers, but at its heart is the Dickensian gulf between Edha (Juana Viale), a brilliant couturier struggling to transform her pain into art, and Teo (Andrés Velencoso), an immigrant who wants revenge for his brother’s death in a sweatshop fire.
It doesn’t have the swagger of Money Heist, or the swoon of Velvet, but what Edha has is Edha.
Edha is a complicated heroine who compels your attention. From the opening scene, she’s a scowling, difficult, gorgeous genius. She runs through the people in her life with a clinician’s touch, but as the show illustrates, Edha is a deeply emotional woman. So much of the story circles around how Edha is haunted by the loss of her mother Ines, but this is far from a straight-forward story of grief. Edha’s mother was a fashion genius who killed herself 20 years prior. When Edha starts poking into her mother’s final collection, Ines’s best friend and collaborator makes her own suicide into a flashy art spectacle. Edha doesn’t take this as a warning sign, but a green light to tap into her mother’s work – and Edha’s own memories of her mother’s odd asphyxiation habits — to reach a new plateau as a designer.
But Edha drags whenever it takes its focus off this compelling heroine. I’m talking pepper-haired businessmen cutting sweatshop deals over drinks, some confusing teen drama with leering papas, drug dealer hoo-ha, and a few minutes of time spent on the ugliest dog on TV.
Nevermind, the ugly dog is rather great.
My biggest complaint is that the show takes too long getting to the meat of the drama: the steamy, messy love affair between Edha and Teo. You know from the first episode that these superlatively sexy people are destined to collide — and collide they do, at the very end of Episode 2.
Teo’s journey is one of anger, resentment, and revenge. When we first meet him, he’s illegally selling his brother’s sweatshop goods on the street for the funds to pay off a gangster. Teo is one of those beautiful men going nowhere fast. You can tell this from his hipster mullet haircut and his messy love affair with his brother’s ex. He’s got nothing. And then, when his brother’s sweatshop explodes, he’s got a reason to live and that reason is revenge. Teo quickly realizes that it was Edha’s fashion house — also named Edha! — that was pushing the sweatshop to work in unsafe conditions. Teo sets his sights on ruining Edha, but instead winds up becoming her lover and her muse.
The most interesting thing about Edha isn’t the death or the fires or the sexy models; it’s how the show flips the script on traditional power dynamics. Edha is not only allowed, but encouraged to be a demanding genius. People get in her way at their own risk and gladly suffer for her vision. While other shows and films would put a man in this role, and a woman in the place of his scheming muse — coughs, Phantom Thread, coughs — Edha is more than comfortable with the flip. In fact, the show is so blasé about Edha’s own high status, it’s intoxicating.
Edha is far from the strongest Netflix foreign drama, but it’s a strong-enough soap opera with an exceptional leading lady. Juana Viale truly is the star of the show. Edha‘s not only a show that swirls around her, but it’s elevated anytime she struts, scowls, or smirks her way across the frame.
Oh, and Edha has one more charm in its favor: it’s short. The first season is 10 episodes long, and each episode clocks in at around 40 minutes. This isn’t going to be a huge trudge of a binge, but a stylish and saucy evening escape from the doldrums of your days.
Season 1 of Edha is now streaming on Netflix.
