Relationship of Eve Polastri and Villanelle

Eve Polastri and Villanelle are fictional characters in Luke Jennings' novel Codename Villanelle (2018) and in its BBC America television adaptation Killing Eve (2018– ). The following focuses solely on the specific plot developments of the television series.

Polastri is a British intelligence operative whose quarry is psychopathic hired assassin Villanelle, the characters pursuing supremacy in their cat-and-mouse relationship. Though occupying overtly antagonistic roles, the women develop a mutual obsession of "would-be lovers"^[2] who are bound together "in a twisted pas de deux".^[3]

In Killing Eve

In the television series, Polastri is introduced as a "bored spy agency bureaucrat" who, after being called into a meeting about a recent assassination, speculates that the killer is a woman, and, after a series of plot twists, is tasked with finding the killer.^[4] Agent Polastri tracks assassin Villanelle across Europe, not as hero and villain but as "two broken women whose flaws bind them together in a twisted pas de deux".^[3]

Villanelle is romantically interested in women and is captivated by Polastri, perhaps in part because of a "shared brusqueness".^[4] She buys Polastri fancy clothes and tries to have dinner with her—by invading Polastri's home.^[4] During the home invasion, Polastri, though terrified, soon manages to speak to Villanelle as a mother to a child—one not fully formed emotionally, a "homicidal woman-child" who is "only formidable because she can kill", with Polastri wresting verbal dominance even as Villanelle presses a knife blade to Polastri's breastbone.^[5]

With both Polastri and Villanelle being "deeply strange" and possessed of a "wild, unlikely interior weirdness and flux", it seemed equally possible that they "could team up, or try to kill each other, or fall into bed", and in the first season finale "they seem to do all three".^[6] In that episode, the elegance of Villanelle's Paris apartment initially infuriates intruder Polastri, who realizes she herself might have led a more "audacious and hedonistic" life.^[6] However, as Villanelle returns home, Polastri puts down her weapon and, on a bed, the women mutually confess their obsession with each other.^[6]

Character contrasts and similarities, conflict and attraction

Despite being enemies professionally, both characters are single, professional, childless women,^[5] "hard-working, ambitious, and slightly obsessive",^[1] whose respective worlds "betrayed and deceived them at every turn".^[7] However, the amoral Villanelle's existence is "saturated with pleasure" while Eve's career has been as a "bored security-state functionary".^[6] Further, series writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge explained that Polastri has a "sense of self-consciousness and guilt" that cripples her - a perfect counterpoint to Villanelle, who, as Ashley Boucher noted in TheWrap, only does things that might bring joy.^[8]

Even with Villanelle in front of her when Villanelle invades her home, Eve can’t quite capture who Villanelle is as a person, the assassin always seeming to be a few steps ahead: possessed of a "frustrating attraction", Polastri "keeps banging her head on the enigmatic wall that is Villanelle".^[9] Conversely, though Villanelle has the opportunity to kill Polastri during the home invasion, forces within Villanelle - despite being raised to kill without guilt or concern - compel her to want Polastri alive.^[7] Through the cat-and-mouse pursuit and mutual obsession, they know they are "two of a kind" and "can trust in each other's constancy",^[7] the two women being "fueled by a volatile cocktail of ambition, curiosity and morbid adoration".^[10]

Social, thematic and creative context

Conspicuously, the protagonist and antagonist in Killing Eve are both women - a rarity in cat-and-mouse thrillers.^[4][5] Even in contrast to films such as Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal in which one lead character is female, the conflict between Polastri and Villanelle is more equal despite the fact one entered as "an MI5 paper-pusher" and the other was introduced as an experienced assassin.^[5]

Though most feminist narratives are framed in terms of a male-female dynamic, Polastri and Villanelle explore "patriarchy's impact on the already delicate complexities of female relationships": though sisterhood is powerful, "it’s also complicated and devoid of guarantees" and "can be false and a trap".^[7]

The relationship between Polastri and Villanelle - "often sexual, at times romantic, and occasionally vengeful" - resists categorization.^[12] Their mutual affectation suggests an alternative lifestyle, the couple performing an "elaborate dance, edging closer to one other while always being just slightly out of reach".^[12] The characters’ mutual interest is "rooted in a desire of an unknown - a life away from the men that presently structure their lives".^[12]

Portrayals

Showrunner-writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge remarked that the characters "give each other life in a way that’s more complex than a romantic relationship. It’s sexual, it’s intellectual, it’s aspirational."^[3] Along these lines, Melanie McFarland wrote in Salon that the show's "careful awareness of the love languages of fashion, music and setting all play roles in strengthening (the audience's) affair" with the characters.^[7] Hannah Giorgis wrote in The Atlantic that its "greatest success" is how alluring it makes Villanelle to an intelligence agent dedicated to tracking her down.^[13] Calling Killing Eve a "sexually charged female-buddy-comedy espionage nailbiter", Jenna Scherer wrote in Rolling Stone that the actresses "share a crackling chemistry, one that situates them in a gray realm between bitter enemies and would-be lovers".^[2]

Jia Tolentino wrote in The New Yorker that the "women are deeply strange, forming a collective study in improbable contrasts, strung together by each actor’s charisma".^[6] Matt Zoller Seitz wrote in Vulture that Oh’s performance as Polastri actually makes Villanelle's character feel more plausible - as "an incarnation of Eve’s sublimated aggression and assertiveness".^[5] Though Jia Tolentino wrote in The New Yorker that Villanelle’s character "works" because of Comer’s "mercurial, unassailable charisma",^[6] and Willa Paskin wrote in Slate that Comer's Villanelle (twisted and conscienceless but also irrepressible) is "flat-out incredible"^[4] and Mike Hale agreed in The New York Times that Comer is good in that "showier part", Hale added that it is Ms. Oh who ensures the series is "more than a cute gloss on the glamorous international caper."^[1]

References

External links

• BBC America profile for Eve Polastri (archive)
• BBC America profile for Villanelle (archive)