Nine Per­fect Strangers serves up a pitch-black cri­tique of well­ness culture

What hap­pens when you throw nine per­fect strangers into a well­ness retreat which blends med­i­ta­tion, dirt dig­ging (read: grave dig­ging), fast­ing and sack races, with the promise of com­plete phys­i­cal and men­tal trans­for­ma­tion at the end of the ten day course? You’ll come to realise that, as much as we all strive for it, there is no such thing as per­fec­tion and, if there was, every­one would be even more mis­er­able than they already are. Just ask Ben (Melvin Gregg), one of the nine strangers, whose wife Jes­si­ca (Sama­ra Weav­ing) has booked them into Tran­quil­lum House as a means to recon­nect as a couple.

To the oth­ers, it looks like Ben and Jes­si­ca have it all: the Lam­borgh­i­ni, the Insta­gram looks – the whole social media pack­age. As we get to know them behind the lux­u­ri­ous doors of Tran­quil­lum, how­ev­er, a dif­fer­ent image tran­spires. One that shows us the real Jes­si­ca, the one who has no sense of self-worth with­out her dai­ly dose of vir­tu­al strangers giv­ing her the thumbs up; the one who has cul­ti­vat­ed a life around allow­ing peo­ple to see and com­ment on her shell, but who is as des­per­ate as she is ter­ri­fied to be tru­ly seen on the inside. Most of all by her hus­band Ben, whom she fears has lost all inter­est in her when, in real­i­ty, he has lost all inter­est in his lot­tery-win­ning, pur­pose­less mil­lion­aire existence.

Nine Per­fect Strangers trans­ports us to a Cal­i­for­nia envi­ron­ment adver­tised as a place of escapism that actu­al­ly serves as a bat­tle­ground of cru­el con­fronta­tions. Not only for the volatile cock­tail of strangers and all their emo­tion­al bag­gage, but the dark­est cor­ners of your own mind, your bro­ken heart and your ail­ing body. Noth­ing here is ran­dom, not even the group of peo­ple who sign up for ten days of per­son­al hell. Masha (Nicole Kid­man), the ​“amaz­ing, mys­ti­cal East­ern-block uni­corn”, is the founder and leader of this cult-like resort, and curates these groups based on their per­son­al and med­ical backgrounds.

Pilot episode ​‘Ran­dom Acts of May­hem’ offers a super­fi­cial intro­duc­tion of the par­tic­i­pants, each of whom brings their own psy­cho­log­i­cal ingre­di­ents into this dan­ger­ous mix. Next to Ben and Jes­si­ca there’s the clos­et­ed pre­scrip­tion drug addict Tony (Bob­by Can­navale) in all his bot­tled up shame; Napoleon (Michael Shan­non), a devot­ed hus­band and father, try­ing not to break under the weight of his wife Heather’s (Ash­er Ked­die) grief, and to get his daugh­ter, Zoe (Grace van Pat­ten) to sing in the show­er again; Carmel (Regi­na Hall), an inse­cure house­wife deter­mined to find back to her­self or rather, a new ver­sion there­of; Fran­cis (Melis­sa McCarthy), a lone­ly, mid­dle-aged, hot-flash­ing nov­el­ist no longer able to write her­self out of her crises; and Lars (Luke Evans), a pot-stir­ring nar­cis­sist with ulte­ri­or motives.

You’d expect any well­ness resort to ease its par­tic­i­pants in, to give them the time to warm to one anoth­er before coax­ing their indi­vid­ual dark­ness out to serve at break­fast, along with their tai­lored smooth­ies. Not Tran­quil­lum. Not Masha. She is eager to throw every­one in at the deep end – lit­er­al­ly, into their own hand-dug graves. Once they’re all lay­ing down bel­ly-up, look­ing up into the sky and the sur­round­ing trees, health coun­sel­lors Yao (Man­ny Jac­in­to) and Delilah (Tiffany Boone) per­fect the rit­u­al of the liv­ing funer­al by throw­ing dirt on them while Masha lets them in on the real con­cept behind Tran­quil­lum: ​“You have come here to die and I’ll bring you back.” Need­less to say, it is these types of exer­cis­es that will prove far more trans­for­ma­tion­al than any of the super­foods and med­i­ta­tion sessions.

Episode two leads Fran­cis, Tony and co down ​‘The Crit­i­cal Path’, one that is designed to open them up to the true mean­ing of suf­fer­ing – the kind they sub­con­scious­ly want and fear all at the same time. The women espe­cial­ly, are will­ing to suf­fer through all types of diet and exer­cise fads and trendy detox meth­ods in the name of ​“well­ness”, but are fierce­ly reluc­tant to con­fronting their truths, their addic­tions, their total lack of self-worth. It high­lights just how tox­ic well­ness cul­ture has become – just anoth­er com­pul­sion, anoth­er indus­try telling us what we should look and feel like, one that typ­i­cal­ly leads us to the same bad case of ​“masochis­tic opti­mism” Fran­cis expe­ri­ences in the love-department.

As the author Chuck Kloster­man points out in his books ​‘Eat­ing the Dinosaur’ and ​‘IV: A Decade of Curi­ous Peo­ple and Dan­ger­ous Ideas’, one of the main rea­sons we get depressed is because we have too much time on our hands to think about all the per­son­al and mate­r­i­al short­com­ings the media repeat­ed­ly tells us we have. And as Masha smart­ly reit­er­ates here, ​“pre-indus­tri­al man didn’t get depressed because he was work­ing.” Based on the book by ​‘Big Lit­tle Lies’ author Liane Mori­ar­ty, Nine Per­fect Strangers is a bril­liant, sharply-word­ed study of the human con­di­tion – specif­i­cal­ly, how we tire­less­ly work toward point­less pur­pose while side-lin­ing the things that actu­al­ly bring mean­ing to our lives.

As the shad­ows loom over ​“gram­tas­tic” and menopausal bod­ies, humil­i­at­ed and numb souls, and over­com­pen­sat­ing and spite­ful spir­its, one might won­der if per­haps there are ​“too many cas­es in one bas­ket” here. And there are pos­si­bly too many super­fi­cial­ly wound­ed peo­ple at the table, fuelled by noth­ing but self-pity, poi­so­nous envy and fruit smooth­ies. Can they trust each oth­er enough to let them­selves fall? Can they trust them­selves enough to let go of all they want to be and accept who they have become? Can sweet Carmel drop the sweet­ly vicious smile and suc­cumb to her anger with­out the phys­i­cal urge to express it?

Dur­ing ​‘Earth Day’, the show’s third episode, the par­tic­i­pants start to focus more and more on the big ques­tions: What’s your sto­ry? What are you in for? This isn’t just reserved for the group mem­bers: soon every­one is ques­tion­ing their motives for hav­ing signed up for this. And in most cas­es the answers are dif­fer­ent to their orig­i­nal jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. In episode two, Masha already hints at inten­si­fy­ing the treat­ment, much to the con­cern of Yao and Delilah, who don’t believe the par­tic­i­pants are prop­er­ly pre­pared yet. Insist­ing that they are, the group is thrown into a full fast and, unbe­knownst to them, their first and last smooth­ie on Earth Day came spiked with drugs. Or med­ica­tion. Whichev­er way you want to look at it.

After a med­i­ta­tion ses­sion and a pota­to sack race, the group is split up, with all the women led to the riv­er by Delilah and the men tak­en to an avo­ca­do tree by Yao. The par­tic­i­pants are encour­aged to con­nect with Moth­er Earth and live off the land, which means that the only food they are allowed to con­sume must be for­aged by them. While most of the women are more con­cerned with shed­ding their clothes and sup­pressed feel­ings in the hot springs, there­by free­ing part of them­selves up in order to con­nect to the oth­ers, the men grow increas­ing­ly hangry.

What could have been a pro­found moment of group ther­a­py is cut short by Lars’ need to pro­voke and Tony’s refusal to live off of wal­nuts for the rest of the day. So, when the men sud­den­ly find them­selves face to face with a goat, they see them­selves forced to make a snap deci­sion: which one of them can gen­uine­ly call them­selves an eth­i­cal carnivore?

End­ing with an uncon­ven­tion­al feast and Napoleon’s dev­as­tat­ing attempt at say­ing grace and shar­ing his heav­i­est bur­den with the table, Nine Per­fect Stranger’s leaves us with a bit­ter taste for more. Stay­ing true to the mod­ern well­ness ide­al, we are more than hap­py to immerse our­selves in the type of self-inflict­ed anguish that ulti­mate­ly serves us with noth­ing but the knowl­edge that we are all indeed, per­fect­ly imperfect.