Tag: french shows

Show Review: Plan Cœur [2018]

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In the mood for a really well acted comedy? Plan Cœur (also known as The Hook Up Plan in English) is definitely a great one!

[This review contains some spoilers] The series follows Elsa (played by Zita Hanrot), who’s still getting over a breakup. She’s not handling it well at all, especially because her relationship ended two years before. Her ex, Maxime (played by Guillaume Labbé), cheated on her and is still with the woman he left Elsa for. To perk her up and help her get over a 25-month dry spell, Charlotte (played by Sabrina Ouazani), one of her best friends, hires a high end prostitute (played by Marc Ruchmann) to woo her. She shares the secret with Emilie (played by Joséphine Draï), their other best friend, who wants to immediately tell Elsa the truth. The problem is, every time they try, the subject changes, someone arrives, or Elsa’s just too happy with Jules, the man in question, who’s also starting to fall for her. Their adorableness is off the charts, for sure!

When Emilie and Charlotte push Jules to ‘dump’ Elsa, he instead keeps seeing her, no longer getting paid to do so. At the same time, the other two women are dealing with issues of their own. Charlotte is the sister of Emilie’s boyfriend Antoine (played by Syrus Shahidi) and living upstairs in their apartment with Matthieu (played by Tom Dingler), Antoine and Maxime’s recently unemployed best friend. Antoine and Matthieu are also Maxime’s continuous voice of reason and the three play off each other well. But as Else moves on with her life, happy with Jules, Maxime gets more and more jealous, something his new girlfriend picks up on. Of course, the secrets can only last so long …

Jules is my favourite character on the show by far, although I do like Elsa, Matthieu and Antoine. Emilie and Charlotte are funny, but stringing their friend along on a lie ain’t cute. It’s Matthieu and Antoine that really push for honesty, so points for them. There’s a lot of deception in the show, actually, and it goes on into the second season and it gets a little frustrating. One of the reasons I like Jules the most is because he owns up to everything and really tries to win Elsa over, which is super endearing. And his friendship/brotherhood with Roman (played by Yvan Naubron), and his love for his mum are really lovely.

Overall it’s a cute show with some great laugh-out-loud moments and an endearing central cast. I’m excited to see how season two ends!

Show Review: Le Bazar de la Charité [2019]

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STOP WHATEVER YOU’RE DOING AND WATCH THIS ONE. Le Bazar de la Charité is the best thing I have seen in a while. (I say that a lot, but somehow it always happens to be true??) But seriously, guys, this one is amazing. Now, that said, it is really hard to watch in parts, so go into it prepared, but it’s seriously worth it. It’s a historical costume drama set at the end of the nineteenth century, but this is definitely a show for everyone. It’s on Netflix as Bonfire of Destiny in most places, I think.

The miniseries follows the lives of three women affected by the (historical event) fire at the Bazar de la Charité in 1897. It was a horrible accident that killed over 120 people. It’s so heartbreaking. I read a bit of the case after watching episode one and learned that it was one of the first instances where dental records were used in forensics. I had no idea. My heart just breaks for all the victims.

The characters in the show are Adrienne de Lenverpré (played by Audrey Fleurot), Rose Rivière (played by Julie de Bona), Alice de Jeansin (played by Camille Lou), Victor Minville (played by Victor Meutelet), Jean Rivière (played by Aurélien Wiik) and Marc-Antoine de Lenverpré (played by Gilbert Melki). So basically, three women and the men in their lives. There’s a good number of background characters as well, and it’s wonderful how much character development they all get. But, back to the main ladies, Adrienne is trying to leave her husband Marc-Antoine, because he’s an absolute psycho; Alice is planning to marry Julien, a really, really rich man; and Rose, who’s Alice’s best friend, is married to the wonderful, lovely, fabulous Jean, and they’re planning on moving to New York. Now, here cometh the spoilers, ye have been warned.

The day of the fire, Adrienne was planning on leaving Marc-Antoine and running away with her daughter. She’s been sleeping with Hugues Chaville in secret and hates her husband (which is good, because he’s the worst). Marc-Antoine figures it out, unfortunately, and sends Adrienne’s daughter off to boarding school and then tells Adrienne that if she doesn’t stop the divorce proceedings, she’ll never see her daughter again. (Like I said, the worst.) He then sends Adrienne off to the bazaar and tells her to act normally. Instead, she gets into a carriage with Hugues and disappears. (I cheered.)

At the same time, Alice is trying to figure out how to tell Rose that she and Jean are heading off to New York. Jean leaves her at the bazaar so that she can talk to Rose about it. He then leaves. Inside, Alice and Rose bump into Victor. Well, for Alice it’s literal. Victor picks her pocket easily, but then hands the bracelet back, calling her ‘your highness’ and clearly flirting with her. She calls him a cad. THEIR CHEMISTRY, GUYS.

The fire starts soon after the bazaar opens and soon it’s engulfed the whole warehouse, which has only one exit with a rotating door. I’m warning you now, guys, this scene is horrible. Heartbreakingly, devastatingly horrible. A lot of people die in the fire and the scene is hard to watch.

In the chaos, Julien leaves Alice behind and pushes Rose into the flames. He gets out. Alice witnesses the whole thing. Victor, who had been outside, decides to be an absolute hero and begins bashing in through the wall of the warehouse, trying to make a hole to get the rest of them out. He manages it. VICTOR IS A WALL SMASHING PRINCE AND MY PERSONAL HERO, OKAY? He gets the firefighters into the warehouse and manages to save Alice. He then doubles back to save more. GUYS.

Outside, Adrienne returns to the warehouse with Hugues and decides to use the moment to fake her death and escape from her abusive husband.

After the fire, Hugues takes her in and she pushes him to help her get her daughter back. Alice, meanwhile, refuses to forgive her fiancé for leaving her to die and, you know, shoving her best friend into the fire (I HATE HIM SO MUCH). She tells her father what happened, but instead of being a good person about it, he tells Alice she has to marry Julien because they’re going to be broke and Julien is rich. (Lovely. /s) Alice isn’t remotely amused and starts meeting up with Victor in secret. And Rose, the poor thing, wakes up in hospital badly burned. When it was revealed that she lived, I straight up started crying. Rose begs a women to get her husband, but instead, the woman takes her home and pretends she’s Odette, the women’s daughter. (Don’t get me started.) The woman, Madame Huchon (played by Josiane Balasko), forces Rose to stay and threatens to lock her up if she tells anyone with the truth. Huchon wants Rose to pretend to be Odette and raise Tomas, Odette’s son. (Messed up doesn’t cover it.)

What follows are probably some of the most anxiety-inducing episodes I have seen on television in a while. It’s only eight episodes long and I binged it. It also has a really, really satisfying ending. (I promise!) The characters are so wonderfully done and all the women are just amazing and the romances are on point! Victor and Alice’s chemistry is off the CHARTS; Adrienne and Hugues work together so well trying to save Camille, the daughter; and Jean and Rose are just so precious. There’s also a great mystery to the whole thing that involves a lot of the background characters and just adds an extra layer of intensity to it all. Célestin Hennion (played by Stéphane Guillon), who’s helping Victor and starts investigating Adrienne’s death, is another wonderful character.

I 100% recommend this to everyone! But most especially if you love romance, history and drama all tangled together with a dash of politics and mystery. Oh, and of course, forbidden love!

Show Review: Zone Blanche (2017)

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Zone Blanche, or Black Spot, is a dark and twisty show. (I’m still not clear as to how a show with the name ‘White Zone’ gets an English title of Black Spot, but I digress …) It follows the residents of a small French town, Villefranche, which is surrounded by miles and miles of forest. It has a murder rate six times the national average and very little technology. (Even microwaves are known to fritz out.)

Prior to the events of the show, the mayor’s daughter went missing. No one knows anything, but everyone’s holding out hope that she’s just run away. When Prosecutor Franck Siriani arrives in the town, he begins poking around in everyone’s business. He immediately butts heads with Laurène Weiss, the head of the local police with a dark past. And when I say dark, I mean dark. There’s a tradition in the town that every teenager spends a night in the forest alone and let’s just say we see it end poorly in more than one episode.

While Laurène and her partner Martial Ferrandis (Nounours, or ‘Teddybear’) try and solve the numerous murders and mysteries of the town, her daughter Cora delves deeper and deeper into a radical group determined to mess with the town’s mayor. The mayor and Laurène have a complicated history that resurfaces as she tries to find his daughter; meanwhile, Nounours is one of the few out of the closet gay men in the village and in addition to dealing with backlash from some of the less-than-open-minded locals, struggles with his burgeoning relationship with a closeted man.

There’s some seriously twisted sides of the town that are slowly revealed as the episodes unfold. Often the characters talk about the forest like it’s speaking to them, and you’re left wondering if it’s a metaphor or if the forest is, in fact, sending them messages. I feel like the forest becomes its own character in the show.

One of the first things I loved about the show is the imagery. It’s so, so atmospheric and beautiful. If you like foggy small town mysteries, this one is for you. It fits right in with Øyevitne and La Forêt, which I just started. Kind of reminds me of, like, a less creepy genre of The Ring. It’s not nearly as horrific, but the atmosphere and creeping quietness are similar. It’s a genre I really, really like.

I definitely recommend this to fans of crime dramas and small town mysteries!

 

**gifs found online, not mine

Review: Il était une seconde fois (2018)

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‘Relationships are all the same, but no one experiences them the same way.’

Il était une seconde fois, or Twice Upon a Time, centres around Vincent and Louise. It’s told out of order, switching back and forth between the past and the present. I did notice it switching from full screen to wide screen as well, so I think that was an intentional method to differentiate between the past and the present. If you don’t pay attention to that, though, it’s easy to get lost. The changes happen without warning.

**contains spoilers**

The series starts off with Vincent basically a drunken mess who’s spiralling into depression and destruction after the end of his relationship with Louise. Over the course of the series, you find out that Vincent and Louise met one night in a pub and instantly hit it off. They agree neither wants a relationship but their chemistry is undeniable and they get into a relationship despite Louise having an unfinished relationship with James, and Vincent still seeing the mother of his son.

One day, a postman leaves a box, ‘the cube’, with Vincent. It’s quite literally just a box. When he’s trying to figure out what it does, he realises the box doesn’t have a back and comes out on the other side nine months in the past with his relationship still intact.

In both timelines, Louise struggles with opening up to Vincent after a traumatic event in her last relationship has left her reeling. It’s revealed later that she was having an affair with a married man and when the wife found out, she jumped in front of a train with Louise there, riddling her with guilt for the rest of her life. 

Madly in love with Louise and wanting to fix their relationship, he goes back and forth between the past with Louise and the present with his son, not wanting to lose either. His inability to pick one leads to both sides missing him and wondering where he’s been for days on end. Louise tolerates it for a time, listening to his ‘story’ about time travel and viewing it as something like method acting for writers. The only person who believes Vincent is his brother, a man struggling with schizophrenia.

In the present, the postman who left the cube keeps stalking him to get the box back, asking Vincent if he can search his house, his car, and generally just being weird. There are a few others who keep up the weirdness and trying to figure out who wants what and why is difficult. The background of the cube is never really explained outside of his brother making a few ideas about light and photons. And there are background figures trying to get the cube back from Vincent, too, but other than a few lines, these characters aren’t delved into. It leaves you with quite a few questions, although I think the point of the series was to make an existential statement rather than a scientific drama.

Overall the series is quite interesting, and Gaspard Ulliel and Freya Mavor have amazing chemistry and their acting is perfection, but I do wish it’d been a few episodes longer, told a little less convolutedly, and the science fiction/time travel explained more.