'Little America' Episode 4: French woman's 'Eat Pray Love' saved by Mélanie Laurent's personal touch
This article contains spoilers for Season 1, Episode 4: 'The Silence'/'Sylviane'
Whether Little America's fourth episode was written based on 'Eat Pray Love' or the Julia Roberts starrer was based on the episode's titular Sylviane is a debate for another time, but the Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V Gordon anthology brainchild has little to add to Liz Gilbert's pursuit of peace in the Indian ashram. Or even her quest to embrace life once again in the arms of the charismatic Felipe in Bali for that matter. Add to that a blossoming pregnancy and French heritage, and you have the Apple TV+ show's Sylviane - a loud spirit wrapped under the vow of silence. That, and of course, a trip to America that was supposed to be her "finding-myself" stint.
We meet Sylviane as she is trying to get through tedious hours of meditation without uttering a single word. She is easily distracted, just the way Roberts' Liz was - swatting away flies, breaking fellow meditators to heavy sobs by killing those flies, and often drifting away into her world of imagination, fixating on regular things around her - like a braless meditator's prominent nipples, or even a monkey from a Buddha painting coming to life and playing with her in her lap. It's easy to tell Sylviane is a rebel; she doesn't stop fidgeting even when the guru glares at her to compose herself - the same way Liz coped on her first day at the ashram in 'Eat Pray Love'. And just the way Liz's fidgety rebellion got washed away once she found the company of a fellow white man amidst several Indian devotees, Sylviane's only respite arrives in the form of a muscular hunk called Jack.
Sylviane is more self-proclaimedly desperate than Liz though, as she immediately takes to fantasizing about Jack while sitting right behind him to meditate. In her hallucinations, he is a shirtless sailor - something that drives her to change the names on the chores-board so the two of them share the same duties at the ashram-type place. Later in the day, when she sneaks out of the grounds to find Jack's car and helps herself to some good music and potato chips after the dreary raw food of the facility, she eventually succumbs to the other kind of fantasizing. It happens as the two of them sneak into the woods nearby and something digs into Sylviane's foot. As Jack pulls out a pocket knife and unnecessarily seductively proceeds to pull the object away, Sylviane imagines the two of them going full at it but somehow Jack rips the baby out of her belly, forcing her in reality to kick him with the injured foot instantly.
So Jack does what any sane man would do and shuffles his name back to a different chore - which Sylviane notices, thereby deciding to tone it down a notch on the creepiness. The only thing that makes you want to continue on Sylviane's journey is probably Mélanie Laurent's little theatrics into the character that saved her from being a bland rip-off of Roberts' Liz. Sadly, more than dwelling on Sylviane as an individual, the story dives deeper into her needs for constant validation of self through someone else - preferably a fairly attractive person's eyes - a psychosis Sylviane's therapist has enlightened her with, as she tells Jack at the end of the episode.
After sneaking out into civilization, stocking up on junk food, and spending time together, Sylviane finally loses her balance during an activity where people are partnered in twos and they have to touch each other's palm high up - like a stagnant high-five. It makes Sylviane hallucinate once again and she sees her and Jack's imperfectly blissful life ahead with two kids and difficult fights in camping trips. When she drifts back into sentience, she runs as far and as fast she can - getting lost in the woods, dancing all by herself, and laying down on the forest floor to be showered by rain pellets. But she returns to the facility at night and even hounds into the same food she so vehemently detested a day or two ago.
The next day, it is time for them to break the silence and we get to hear from Sylviane the predicted and inevitable. "I need to work on myself before I can work on our relationship" monologue that Liz had given Felipe in their little Bali tryst. And just like Felipe, Jack - without understanding a word of French that Sylviane just rambled about what a hot mess she is - asks her to come up to his cabin in the woods. And just like the restless Liz, Sylviane's fear of being alone is cured because she has found someone to do exactly what she just so staunchly professed that she shouldn't: found herself through someone else's eyes.
'Little America' premieres with all eight episodes on Friday, January 17, only on Apple TV+