MAX – ON DEMAND – SERIES
By weaving lies into the fabric of existence, real-life impostors naturally find their place in fiction: Frank Abagnale Jr, who takes on the traits of Leonardo DiCaprio in catch me if you can (2002), by Steven Spielberg, Julia Garner, who becomes Anna Sorokin in the series Inventing Anna (2022). What these virtuosos of reinvention have in common is that they have targeted people who are rich enough for us not to worry too much about their fate.
Christelle, the devoted friend protagonist of the first French series offered by the Max platform, does not benefit from this extenuating circumstance. Poor girl, she’s going to take it out on someone more unfortunate than her. While her companions often exploit the profit or vanity of their contemporaries, Chris (she prefers to be called that) becomes the parasite of suffering.
Inspired by a journalistic investigation – The Mythomaniac of the Bataclan (Points, 2021), by Alexandre Kauffmann, who contributed to the script –, a devoted friend It offers a necessarily painful spectacle, that of a woman adrift who tries to access material and emotional consolation by slipping between the victims of the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris, survivors of the attacks or relatives of the dead and injured.
part of the mystery
It takes all the intelligence and scope of the performer to overcome the thanklessness of the role. Laure Calamy manages to focus attention on Chris, without offering a linear explanation for his aberrant behavior, preserving an element of mystery. Just Philippot’s rigorous production soberly evokes the atmosphere of amazement and sadness that enveloped the country after November 13. We cannot imagine a more funereal and disturbing series.
In the fall of 2015, Chris, a forty-something dressed like a ’90s teenager, lives with her mother (Anne Benoît, formidable in her impotent rage) in the suburbs of Paris. A failed trip to the capital gave him the impression (widely shared that night) of having escaped the worst. Instead of turning it, like ordinary mortals, into a topic of conversation (for that you would need to have people to talk to), he invents, on social networks, an old and unbreakable friendship for one of the victims.
Laure Calamy conveys the type of savagery that inhabits this woman with no future when she is offered the possibility of finding a place of choice in society. From the first episode, he insinuates himself into the intimacy of a survivor (Annabelle Lengrone), giving free rein to the destructive impulse that accompanies (and often hinders) her desire for integration.
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