FRANCE 2 – MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 AT 9:05 PM – SERIES
Discovering this series that evokes the Wars of Religion, older people will feel transported, not under Charles IX, but to the era of the “glorious thirties”, which saw the public audiovisual service bring the national novel to the screen based on literary heritage. Fortune of France It is part, for better or worse, of a lineage that goes from comics to live action (LagardèreThe Adventures of the Hunchback (Jean Piat version, in 1967) in the Republican fresco (Black breadby Serge Moati, in 1974).
The best thing is the careful writing and the precision of the staging. Christopher Thompson, director of the project, immersed himself in the first volumes of the historical saga published by Robert Merle (1908-2004), from 1977, to try to find portals between the 16my and XXImy centuries. The worst (not so serious) thing is the rigidity of the narration, which does not encourage the performers to relax.
Despite the brutality of the time, the life and torments of the Siorac family, a line of squires from the Périgord, whose lord and master Jean (Nicolas Duvauchelle) converted to the reformed religion, will develop wisely, respecting the loose ends and completing a somewhat outdated romantic narrative.
The first episode begins in 1557, at the end of the reign of Henry II. Protestantism is banned. Jean de Siorac’s conversion left him vulnerable, both to his Catholic neighbours and in his own home. Isabelle de Caumont, his wife (Lucie Debay), remained faithful to Catholicism.
Educational intention
The chronicle of a nobleman’s daily life is kept in meticulous detail. The faith of the master, who happens to be a doctor and disciple of Ambroise Paré, shocks his people, who are called to renounce the beliefs that have so far allowed them to sustain their destiny.
However fascinating this painting is, it is drawn with an educational intent that forbids chiaroscuro in the painting of the figures. There is, however, something potentially fascinating in this Jean de Siorac, a nobleman by divine right forced to reconsider his status by his new obedience, torn between the austere and brutal precepts of Calvinism and the desire to preserve the specific privileges of his order.
Within the limits of the series, Nicolas Duvauchelle exploits these cues, supported by Guillaume Gouix, who plays the role of Jean de Sauveterre, his brother in arms. Sauveterre embodies a rigorous version of the Reformation and Gouix excels in expressing the tension between humanism and necessary violence.
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