With a lot of care and accuracy, the filmmaker Jérôme Bonnell tries to the series with a rural polar attached filmed through the eyes of a child.
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The tall grass finally serially only the name. The cutting into three parts of what could have been a television film – the three episodes are also broadcast after – does not seem to have any reason to have a brief time of breath, just the time to say That, yes, it’s worth it to keep looking. The mini-series of Jérôme Bonnell resuscitates in this a form of old-fashioned TV, and this is a compliment.
To tell this story of murder in a small town of Touraine, the filmmaker discreetly summons the ghosts of the great way and the brazen, and puts his camera at a child’s height. Jules, a taciturn boy, is entrusted to the good care of a young couple while his mother recovers from a serious accident from the road. Lucile is a journalist and covers the closure of a factory that feeds the anger of local “yellow vests”. It’s the summer, she registered jules at the football club to occupy her while she works. His taisseous husband, Glenn, left the police after the death of his father and furnished his days by emptying the family home. First shrageous, he finally wait for the child.
Jérôme Bonnell had the great idea to entrust these roles with two off-gonned actors but whose face is not familiar with the public. Louise Chevillotte (discovery in The lover of a day , from Philippe Garrel) gives his young bride character barely out of adolescence the aplomb of a mother. In the role of Glenn, Jonathan Couzinié subtly deconstructs the figure of the darkness.
Character thickness
The fragile balance of this ephemeral family is shaken by the disappearance of Mounir, a seasonal of which nobody cared until the mother of Lucile, Eve (Emmanuelle Devos, perfect in stubborn bourgeois), does not push the police to investigate. The summer tale then turns into a minimalist thriller on the background of social violence and family rivalries.
But the thickness of the characters, including secondary – India Hair in sensual countryside, Lazare Gousseau in depressive and alcoholic Hurluberlu -, prevents, in a certain way, that we are interested in intrigue. Moreover, the outcome does not necessarily convince: too few clues have been sown and the series loses its power of fascination when it opens to physical violence. But it must be concluded, and it’s a shame, because we would have gone a little more time with these actors that Jérôme Bonnell leads with great care and accuracy.
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