RATING
Director(s): Stephane Demoustier, Farid Bentoumi
Country: French
Actor(s): Mouna Soualem, Olivier Rabourdin, Denis Eyriey
Written by Tom Augustine
Brutality is where The Embers, the new French series from famed screenwriter Thomas Bidegain, begins. The heat seems to ripple off the screen as the camera drifts between different locations in the South of France. A hospital bed, an aging mayor, a shadowy figure standing over them. So far, so Agatha Christie. The mysterious figure places the mayor’s heart monitor on his own finger, and then commits a shocking act of violence — a scalping, all the more heart-stopping for the fact that most of it takes place off screen. A slash of blood covers the wall and The Embers begins, with the lingering, metallic taste of blood pervading what’s to come. The act of scalping is a loaded, deeply intimate one — most associate the action with the conflict between colonisers and indigenous Americans. In Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, the myth that this was an act of sadism only directed toward colonisers, and not from colonisers, is dispelled in the story of a roaming party of bandits-for-hire cutting a trail of blood across the Southern United States. In Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine – who, we’re told, has Apache blood, revives this action in taking the fight to the Nazis. The top of the head is sacred in many cultures — the desecration of the same has deep historic precedent and suggests a profound spiritual horror. Both are present in The Embers, a series that, we’ll come to discover, has plenty of interest in France’s own colonial past, specifically that of their relationship with Algeria.
Airing exclusively on the Rialto Channel, the new series from prolific French screenwriter Thomas Bidegain (Stillwater, Rust and Bone, Emilia Perez) is a brutal, fascinating crime drama that mingles dark personal secrets with the scars of France’s colonial past. Nimbly jumping between time periods, it’s a sun-drenched French response to True Detective.
Mouna Soualem stars as Lidia, a capable young anti-terrorism recruit, across two different time periods. In 1995, a scalping occurs, in this instance upon an imam in a mosque in the small French town of Péranne, prompting Lidia’s investigation. She’s joined by an older male detective, part of the French gendarmerie — Jean (Olivier Rabourdin), who is haunted by the spectre of his actions during the French-Algerian war. Meanwhile, in the present day, Lidia is drawn back into the case after Jean disappears, and murders similar to those that took place in 1995 (including that of the aforementioned mayor) suggest that secrets have not, cannot remain buried. Comparisons to True Detective are apt, and like that now-classic series, The Embers bears a strong visual signature. The heat of Southern France is palpable here, though not in the humid, dreamy way of that earlier show. There’s a distinctive, sunworn sharpness to the imagery that doesn’t call attention to itself, but aids in the steady accumulation of atmosphere. It’s a handsome show, with its most intriguing landscape being Soualem’s face, who makes for a compelling lead here across two different decades. Rabourdin is also an intriguing presence, with much more to be gleaned beyond the two episodes supplied for this review.
Bidegain’s body of work is extensive, but I’ve found his best offerings stay close to the ground, particularly within the world of the French criminal scene – his A Prophet stands as filmmaker Jacques Audiard’s most-acclaimed work; while his script for Tom McCarthy’s Stillwater is one of the more intriguing American-French works of cross-pollination in recent years. The Embers is firmly within that camp (thankfully devoid of all the tacky excesses of Emilia Perez), a complex web of a mystery that pays the right kind of attention to the buried historical trauma of France’s colonial past. It’s difficult, but necessary ground to cover, and indeed much of the best cinema of France has stared unflinchingly into this particular void, from The Battle of Algiers to the films of Claire Denis. The French title is a clue here: Cimetière Indien, or ‘Indian Cemetery’, alluding once again to the parallels between France’s expansion into Northern Africa and the actions of white Americans upon the native population there. In the early episodes, this complexity can at times be hard to follow, with the distinction between the two time periods proving a little muddier to parse than perhaps intended. The show’s meaty themes and strong visual and stylistic sensibility is likewise under-served by an insistent, overcooked score that’s more pedestrian than the elements surrounding it. Thankfully, by this point the intrigue is intoxicating, the slow process of puzzle pieces amassing enough to dispel minor quibbles. It’s a promising start to a series with a lot on its mind.
The Embers… A Rialto Channel Exclusive Series – Episode 1: June 17, 8.30PM (Sky, Channel 39)