6 days ago
- Entertainment
- SBS Australia
Past and present crimes unfold in scorching drama 'The Embers'
Despite the name – which might suggest a slowly unfolding drama about events after the heat is over, after the big action is done – The Embers starts with a rapidly escalating scene in a hospital that will have you sitting bolt upright, shocked, pulse racing.
It's not surprising then, to see Stéphane Demoustier ( L'Opera , The Girl with a Bracelet ), director of the first four episodes of this eight-part French series (Farid Bentoumi directs the final four), describe it as 'an utterly scorching thriller'.
In 1995, Lidia Achour (Mouna Soualem, The Night of the 12 , You Resemble Me ), a young member of an anti-terrorism squad, is sent to the town of Péranne after the brutal murder of an imam. Also on the case is local gendarme Jean Benefro (Olivier Rabourdin, Taken , Benedetta ), a man scarred by his memories of the Algerian War. Almost 30 years later, Achour is drawn back to Péranne after another shocking murder there, and the disappearance of her former partner – now a suspect in the investigation led by Adrien Caron (Denis Eyriey, Sambre:Anatomy of a Crime ), the town's newly-appointed police lieutenant.
Lidia (Mouna Soualem) returns to Péranne. Credit: Ulrich Lebeuf / Mintee Studio / CANAL+ Shocking murders aren't unusual in a crime drama. Nor is The Embers' dual timeline. But the setting is less common. It's neither a big-city police beat nor a chilly Noirish village. Instead, it's a fictional town on the edge of the French Riviera – a deliberate choice by the creative team. 'For this portrait of current-day France, we focused on a region that is seldom featured in fiction but is nonetheless omnipresent in our post-industrial societies. It is a France of roads and roundabouts, where industrial zones bleed into business districts, into rows of detached housing, and on and on in a stark yet grandiose sprawl. This is what gave rise to Péranne, our fictional town located somewhere in the Marseille suburbs, but far from the rocky creeks of the calanques or the city's disadvantaged northern projects,' says Thibault Vanhulle, series co-creator and co-writer, along with Thomas Bedegain.
Demoustier describes the setting as 'a territory of trouble and passion alike … Choosing this territory as a living, evocative, deeply complex backdrop has been our way to provide space for stories that have been unfairly overlooked and listen to voices that are too often unheard.'
Jean (Olivier Rabourdin). Credit: Ulrich Lebeuf / Mintee Studio / CANAL+
The Embers is in many ways about how we carry the scars of our past. Benefro is haunted by his memories of war. Achour has regrets about the events of 1995. Caron is a man of deep integrity but burdened by awful experiences. Marwan Oufella (Idir Azougli) lost his mother in an arson attack as a young boy and was raised by a racist, violent criminal. Years later, his paths cross with Caron and Achour in Péranne. Mehdi Meraouiis (Kamel Mahjoubi) is man trying to rebuild his life, but he, too, is caught up in current-day series of murders. The series also asks, does the passage of time fulfil hopes or dash them? The team wanted 'to spark a dialog between two eras,' says Vanhulle. 'Back in 1995, France's multiculturalism was described as black-blanc-beur ('Black-White-Arab'), a pun on the colors of the national flag. The Soviet Union had recently collapsed, and it was said that we were witnessing the end of history; that digital technology would replace our perishing industries; that the riches of globalisation would be distributed equally; that we would become interconnected, global citizens of a multiethnic, multicultural society; that permanent world peace was on the horizon. Perhaps it was the promises of this era that we wanted to weigh up against our current reality. What exactly happened over those three decades? "This is what inspired the French title of our series: Cimetière Indien ('Indian Cemetery'), based on the way Native American burial grounds were expropriated and desecrated in the quest to build the North America of today. 'The Indian cemetery is history repressed. It is the ghosts that we thought had long been banished for good. But ghosts cannot die; they just keep haunting us. Sometimes they resurface, ready to settle their score with the living.' This article includes edited extracts of material supplied by Mintee Productions / CANAL+.
The Embers is streaming at SBS On Demand.
