Losing Alice Review: The Obsession (Season 1 Episode 4)

As production on Sophie’s film “Room 209” kicks into gear in Losing Alice Season 1 Episode 4, “The Obsession,” the lines between the professional and the personal seem to become increasingly blurry for everyone involved. 

Truly, this is a show where things constantly bubble under the surface, even when the scenes onscreen feel as though they should be straightforward. Everything has multiple levels to it, and subtle shifts often feel like earthquakes. 

Alice, struggling to balance being a wife, mother, and filmmaker in a way her husband is never even asked to attempt, feels as though she is the character we should be sympathizing with here. Yet, her choices over the course of this episode often seem…more than a little disturbing.

Her obsession with Sophie growing, she’s checking her texts like a teenager, stalking her crush’s Insta stories, and making ill-conceived late-night phone calls to check up on her. It’s kind of sad, in a way, how desperately she wants Sophie to call, text her back, acknowledge her in a way that even remotely mirrors how often she does the same in reverse. 

But things cross a line in this episode – or at least it feels like they ought to have done so. Yet, by the end of the hour, nothing has really changed, except that Sophie appears to have wormed her way even further into Alice’s life. 

And it doesn’t always look like Alice entirely minds. Even when Sophie’s bizarre behavior costs her the young actress — Daniella — that she feels was perfect for “Room 209’s” lead role. 

On the surface, the idea that Sophie Facebook stalked a drama student, found out where she worked, went to her bar, got drunk, did drugs with her, and then took her home to have a pseudo-threesome with her boyfriend — all without telling her that she wrote the movie she’s busy auditioning for — seems ludicrous. 

But is it, really? Particularly given some of her behavior in the series’ first three episodes? At this point, it’s hard to tell how whether Sophie’s just a stereotypically messy millennial or someone who might be a real threat to Alice and her family.

Actress Lihi Koronowski is wonderfully adept at playing both sides of a moment in every scene — one minute, Sophie seems downright dangerous; another, she’s just obsessed with documenting her life for her Instagram. 

Did she plan to seduce Daniella in order to drive her out of the film, or to reclaim her power over what clearly seems to be her story? Do she and her boyfriend just like to play weird sex games at home or is there something darker at work?

The weird thing is — this isn’t the first time that something unexplainable has happened to those involved with “Room 209”. After watching how far Sophie seems willing to go to thwart Daniella getting cast as Eleanor, you have to wonder how much of what’s happened so far she’s had a hand in.

Sure, her initial train meeting with Alice seemed like an accident of fate. But was it, really? Or did Sophie wait around, aiming to be on that specific train in order to meet her and push her toward her project?

And what about Hilik, the former director of “Room 209” who disappeared under such mysterious circumstances, clearing the way for Sophie’s idol to director her film? He’s turned up dead and no one seems to know why.

The other, equally disturbing part of this episode is how reluctant Alice seems to be to believe Sophie crossed any lines with Daniella. Her lack of any emotion or affect as the poor girl cries and chokes out her story is difficult to understand 

And even her subsequent confrontation of Sophie rings more than a bit hollow. Her anger over the Daniella situation has no real bite to it, and Sophie’s attitude certainly makes it seem like she is well aware of that fact.

What’s Alice going to do? Call her less than five times that evening?

The episode’s final scene, in which Alice takes herself to the bar where Sophie seduced Daniela and imagines her husband and Sophie acting out a sexually suggestive scene from the film. Is she somehow envisioning an ideal version of the movie she’s making — or fantasizing about her husband and the young woman she can’t get out of her head together? Maybe both?

Additional Thoughts

• Is it just me or does “Room 209” seem…kind of like a terrible movie?
• It’s possible that Ayelet Zurer has the world’s most expressive face. Even without reading the subtitles, you can tell what’s going through Alice’s head just from her shifting looks.
• At one point in Sophie’s evening of booze, drugs, and group sexual escapades did Alice call her?
• Alice and David’s neighbor is deeply creepy and I can’t figure out what it is that Sophie wants from him. Is it simply attention? Is it access to Alice and her husband? Does she just have a thing for older men?
• Where David’s head is at in all this is a mystery to me. He’s clearly attracted to Sophie and having issues about working with Alice, despite her bathroom sex assurances that it’s exciting and kinda kinky to watch him with another woman.

New episodes of Losing Alice stream weekly on Fridays on Apple TV+.

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