Tag: Netflix

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La Forêt: d’Ardenne à Netflix

I was sick for several days in October, and took the occasion to binge watch one of the 2017 French series available on Netflix, La Forêt. It’s got a few things going for it: it’s in French. It has gorgeous footage of European forest. And did I mention it is in French? Unless you are bedridden and looking to work on your listening skills, or if you really, really like Broadchurch knock-offs, I wouldn’t recommend spending you time on watching the six hour-long episodes that are the entirety of this series.

The show is a modern-day polar set in a French village near the Belgian border, right at the edge of the Ardenne forest. Three teenage girls are up to something and get in trouble, one turns up murdered, the other two disappear. Naturally the mother of one of the girls is the second-in-command lieutenant of the village police force, which has just acquired a new chief. The lieutenant has lived in the village all her life, while the new chief arrived from Paris and the army. The investigation turns up one dark secret of village life after another, and also gives the director a chance to show off their arbitrary inclusivity (“This character is Black! That character is Jewish! This one is lesbian! Why? Er, no reason really …”) I don’t object to representation on the screen, but the writers make a big deal of these distinctions but then don’t do anything with them. They also don’t do much with various other plot elements: a phantom wolf in the forest; a hermit living in the forest; somebody slaughters game animals and is careless with a lot of blood. The school teacher who likes to wander naked through the woods.

One thing that is clear: the French don’t seem to think much of conflict of interest. The lieutenant is allowed to fly off the handle countless times as she lets her grief over her missing daughter drive her to violate procedure at every turn. The chief scolds her each time, but nothing comes of it. I don’t think there was ever a second season of this how, but it would actually be interesting to see her play a police officer in a case that does not involve her own family.

One of the weirdest facts about this series is that the station that aired it originally, France 3, partnered with an online gambling company Winamax to allow viewers to put real money bets on the identity of the murder. Winamax built a second-screen experience that would update the odds on each bet in real-time during the nights that the show aired, adjusting them as the plot played out. It was a successful marketing gimmick that attracted a lot of attention on both mainstream media and social media, and in turn a lot of viewers. The series was translated and marketed in Spanish, English, and German, though I don’t know if the betting campaign was Europe-wide or France only. I haven’t heard of any examples of this dynamic being recreated, so perhaps it was a one-time campaign. But it might explain why the writing was so poor …

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A Video Potpourri for La Rentrée

(A version of this article is cross-posted on the blog of the French Cultural Center of Boston.)

I grew up here in Massachusetts and studied French in middle and high school during the 1980s. Years later I discovered the French Cultural Center when preparing for a six-month job rotation to Paris. I’ve been a member and continuing student ever since.

Back in the 1980s I didn’t have much access to French video. Today what’s available in the US is staggering: TV series, YouTube shorts, long films, news, you name it. Though the pandemic has closed off many French learning options, there’s no shortage of videos to stream. They offer visual clues that help infer the meaning of speech, which then helps resolve what the words must have been. Many videos have French closed captions which help build listening skills as well. They cover a wide range of vocabulary and speaking styles, often using a more colloquial register than I find in books, newspapers, or even podcasts.

Here are some of my recent favorites. They vary in length, subject matter, and difficulty, but if you have a B1 or better level of oral comprehension there should be something here for you.

Mr Nouar

Mr. Nouar is a YouTube channel of short sketches about life in modern France by comedian Mohamed Nouar. They contain funny, sharp social commentaries on issues of discrimination, unemployment, race, family, dating, incompetence, love, les relations hommes-femmes. He’s been posting videos since 2014. Born in 1988 of Algerian parents in southwest France, Nouar’s work is full of multicultural twenty-somethings who talk fast, chat ironically, use slang, and revel in verbal jousting.

Available for free on YouTube.

Miraculous

https://youtu.be/oLfCpvgsDB0

Miraculous: les aventures de Ladybug et Chat Noir is a TV series for kids drawn in the Japanese anime style and broadcast from 2015 to 2019. Set in Paris, two young teen superheroes together battle the villain of the week. Meanwhile, their alter-egos conduct an awkward middle school flirtation, unaware of the other’s superhero life. The series has wholesome characters, non-stop dialogue, and simple stories whose predictability helps clue the meaning. Each 21-minute episode includes scenes from daily teen life (school, home, babysitting, subway, market, movie theater, etc.) as well as superhero battles. Though the intended audience is French kids ages 8-12, older students of French can benefit a lot from the series.

Full episodes available on Netflix, excerpts on the official YouTube channel.

Chiffroscope

Chiffroscope is a collection of 48 mini-documentaries (2-3 minutes each) that look at big questions of the day using statistics and irreverent animations. It’s an eclectic series, with topics like cannabis legalization, freedom of the press, money and happiness, overfishing, global chocolate consumption and danger from asteroids. The narrator’s delivery is clean but fairly fast, and there are many complicated numbers spoken aloud (e.g. 143,000) – good listening practice. Otherwise, the language is very accessible, as almost everything is in the present tense and the drawings reinforce the words.

Chiffroscope videos are available on YouTube on the channel «l’Effet Papillon».

Au Service de la France

Au Service de la France is a television series that paints an absurd picture of a French spy agency in the 1960s. Though set in the past, the show debuted in 2015 and is a vehicle for rather acerbic criticisms of French society today. It mocks French attitudes towards Algeria, the rest of Africa, the Cold War, women, and class. Fair warning: the series is hilarious, but intentionally shocking. Many characters say and do awful things designed to illustrate how far French society still has to go. Though cringe-inducing, it’s also a goldmine for studying French language and culture. Lots of things are said on screen that won’t be heard in more sanitized media. The language is challenging, but the French closed captions are quite faithful to the spoken French if you want an assist.

Available on Netflix under the name “A Very Secret Service”. Two seasons of 12 episodes, 25-minutes each.

Dix Pour Cent

Dix Pour Cent is another television series that offers a chance to expand your knowledge of modern French language and culture at the same time. Set in a present day Parisian talent agency, it follows four agents as they deal with landing projects for their touchy stable of stars. But there’s a gimmick: each episode features a guest star who plays themself. Famous French film names like Cecile de France and Michel Drucker are written into the scripts and get to poke fun at themselves or play off their established stereotypes. There are also long running plot arcs around the careers, love affairs, and family troubles of the four agents and their assistants. There’s plenty of familiar and colloquial language in the dialogue, including cursing, drinking, and talk of sex, but nothing discomfiting.

Available on Netflix under the name “Call My Agent!” Four seasons (2015-2020) of six episodes 50 minutes each. Select the original French audio, and either no subtitles or the French closed-captions.

Watching French video can be a great way to improve your French, but don’t be surprised if it takes more energy and focus than watching TV in English. Also, don’t be afraid to watch the same segment more than once, or to watch an entire episode with captions on and then again with captions off. If you add 15 minutes a day of French video watching to your routine, you’ll be sure to notice a big jump in your mastery in no time.

Bonne continuation!

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Au Service de la France: Parody and Prejudice

A friend recently introduced me to the TV series “Au Service de la France“, an absurd parody of a French spy agency in the 1960s (“A Very Secret Service” in English). The show debuted in 2015 and has two seasons totalling 26 episodes so far, with a third season in production. It was the first French series picked up by Netflix and marketed as “a Netflix original”, though it was originally developed by Canal (who abandoned it) and then by the network Arte. I’ve watched 3 episodes so far with the original French audio, both with and without French closed captions. It’s available with English subtitles as well.

I’m conflicted about the series. On the one hand, it is hilarious. The writers mock French attitudes at the time about Africa and Africains, Germany, women, bureaucracy, and more. The deadpan humor is well delivered and the skewering of 1960 French Gaullist culture is brutal. By myself I’m not expert enough on French culture to confirm that it lands for a French audience, but the critical reviews in France are positive as well. I am familiar enough with French culture to get the most of the jokes, I think, and they are pretty funny.

On the other hand, in order to mock these bad attitudes, the show puts them on full display. Yes, the characters showing these behaviors are loathsome and stupid. Yes, the show is self-acknowledgedly politically incorrect and generally irreverent. But while the typical French viewer may have seen the thing being mocked enough times that a little more won’t hurt, I’m not in that situation. I feel I am actively picking up 1960s French prejudices (and perhaps modern ones?) from watching the show. I’ve never viewed the American series “Mad Men”, but I gather its treatment of 1960’s American office culture has the same problem of amplifying sexism and misogyny while nominally criticizing it.

The attitudes towards Africa, with the backdrop of empire and decolonization, are really awful. An African delegation that comes to demand independence is first ignored, then laughed at derisively, then handed off to the intern who surprises everyone by producing a full-fledged constitution and administrative transition plan. Can’t have that, it seems, so the higher ups first try to corrupt the delegation with wine and women, then when that doesn’t work arrange for delegation members to be killed one at a time in innocent accidents. They offer heartfelt condolences to the remaining delegates each time, until the final surviving member accepts a much watered down governmental program, grieving and bewildered. The whole thing is horrid, both despite and because of the thick layer of buffoonery that pervades it all.

I had to snapshot these from Netflix. No official promo images for the series bother to include the African characters…

“C’mon, it’s a parody!”, the devil on my left shoulder says. Yes, but I am too suggestible. For example, I have a teenager in the process of learning to drive. For their benefit, I often narrate aloud what I’m thinking while I’m driving. Yesterday at an intersection I said to them: “Even though we have a green light here, pedestrians in the crosswalk always have right of way,” and then stopped myself before I could say “Well, except Algerians”. Yikes! I would never, ever have thought to introduce that topic gratuitously were it not for the constant stream of insulting and dehumanizing mentions of Algeria and Algerians in the show. Now I have to avoid imitating these horrible examples.

Some of the scenes mock safer targets, while making me feel extra good because I know enough to be in on the joke. For example, an interrogation of a captured East German spy includes a beaurocrat reading aloud a multiple choice questionnaire with items like:

Germany's territory is:
  a) big
  b) small
  c) too small

The Third Reich should have lasted:
  a) 1 month
  b) 10 days
  c) 1000 years

I guess this doesn’t strike me as being as hurtful as the insults lobbed at Africa because of my sense that Germany is now prospering, while Africa is still suffering from its experience with France. But what do I know? Maybe raising these tropes of the expansionist and imperialist German serves to fuel ongoing dissension between France and Germany. I’d have to ask French and German viewers.

Unsurprisingly, humor is hard, and rough humor especially so. For now, I’m going to continue watching, as for me the show is a good source of French culture, especially latent attitudes that are no longer allowed to come to the surface much in modern French media. But I’m not so sure I’ll make it to the end of the series before I change my mind on the balance of benefits and harm.