A Teacher

Our culture is rife with double standards spun out of gender identity. It shouldn’t be controversial to say that men and women are consistently judged differently for their actions, especially when it comes to heterosexual sex. Who is the pursuer, and who is the pursued? What behaviors do we expect from each party? And how are our preconceived notions complicated by instances of mistreatment or manipulation? Filmmaker Hannah Fidell adapts her breakout 2013 film “A Teacher” into a compulsively watchable same-named miniseries (“A Teacher” airs weekly from November 10 through December 29 on FX on Hulu) that thoughtfully and devastatingly considers the rhythm of predation, the lies abusers tell themselves, and the uphill battle faced by survivors stifled by a narrow definition of victimhood.

In a Texas suburb in 2013, 30-something Claire Wilson (Kate Mara) is introduced by her lips first as she precisely applies demure lip balm; later on, Claire will wipe off that neutral shade to replace it with a bold berry lipstick shoplifted from the grocery store. It’s a transition that flirts with cliché but quickly demonstrates the kind of person Claire is: one who has long presented a sort of primness, but whose desire to break the rules is rapidly manifesting in reckless ways. An opportunity for reinvention presents itself when she starts a new job as an English teacher at Westerbrook High School and is immediately labeled by the schools’ male seniors as the school’s hottest employee. Perhaps it’s the confidence boost from that objectification that propels her into a flirtation with her student, Eric Walker (Nick Robinson), the soccer team captain and an aspiring doctor who is hoping for a scholarship to help get him to college. All the 17-year-old senior needs is a better SAT score, and how convenient that Ms. Wilson—he can call her Claire—is available for tutoring.

In its first few episodes, “A Teacher” is deliberate in adding a hint of inappropriateness to what at first seem like innocuous interactions; Fidell, who wrote a handful of episodes and directed nearly all of them, alternates between impropriety and uncertainty to make you wonder if you’re overreacting. Claire insults one of Eric’s friends in order to praise his intelligence—is she keeping it real, or is she ingratiating herself into his good graces? She plays Frank Ocean’s very sensual “Thinkin Bout You” on the car stereo while driving Eric home; she cheekily insults him (“You know how ridiculous you sound?”) when he expresses amazement that she has a life outside of being a teacher; and she masturbates to a fantasy involving him after their first meeting. Claire is instantly and fully in the wrong, and “A Teacher” makes the uncomfortable, but ultimately worthwhile, choice of not really giving us an understanding of what compels her to act this way.

To be frank: Is there any explanation that could make Claire’s behavior justifiable? In practically every way, Claire seems like a normal, unremarkable woman. She’s married to her college sweetheart, Matt (Ashley Zukerman, who gives one of the series’ most shattering speeches), and they live in a beautiful, cozy home. She drives a Subaru. She carries a Madewell bag. She spends too much time on her phone, in particular on Instagram, looking at their peers’ dogs and kids. She’s trying to get pregnant. And she is also profoundly, unrelentingly bored. Mara communicates this malaise with rote pleasantness around Zukerman’s Matt and more light-hearted liveliness around Robinson’s Eric; it’s chilling how well Claire is able to leverage the natural authority afforded to her as a teacher to her advantage. When she lies to her husband about where she’s going; when she uses praise for Eric’s work in her class as a flirtation device; when she organizes a private tour for him of the college he would like to attend, of which she is an alumna. Mara is clear-eyed in both Claire’s narcissism and her refusal to believe that she’s doing anything wrong. She’s a woman, and Eric is almost a man. She can’t be the aggressor—that’s not how heteronormative relationships work. And she can’t be abusing him; what they have is genuine. As she tells him over and over again, Claire is putting everything on the line for Eric. Of course it’s love … isn’t it?