Souviens-toi

We ended up binging this French series in one day, after starting tentatively with the first episode to test the waters (we have no love for explicit skin scenes, or volleys of F words, even in the sub-titles, and, well, this is a French show!), as there was no CONTENT guide here at IMDB. We liked the story, and were pleased to only FF over 1 brief scene. We just don't believe that trashy scenes or bad language enhance the production (as Olivier famously remarked, "Why doesn't the boy just try acting?").

Performances were wonderful by all, especially the indomitable Marie Gillain, and the 7-year old youngster at the heart of the mystery, Madeleine (Zelie Rixhon), who is discovered in her family home with 3 family members shot dead.

The investigating officer, Belgarde, is a family man himself (4 kids and expecting), and he recruits Gillain's character, Marie, to house-sit poor traumatized Maddy. Marie agrees, if Belgarde will re-open the suicide case of her own teen daughter, which was ruled 'open-and-shut'.

There are twists and turns, at a fast pace, and wonderful warm interactions between the children, with each other, and the adults in the story (so refreshing after seeing nasty parents, squabbling kids and unfaithful marriage mates). I was able to partly guess the outcome, and, although the premise is gloomy, the result was redeeming for all. 9/10 Thank you, Prime: Can we have more like this?

The plot and the acting is really good. It could've been great and intriguing movie. But it is way to long and just very boring. The conversations are almost unrealistic and forced between police officers and the captain. Decisions made so nonsensical by psychologists and doctors that it is actually ruining the whole movie. The Things just make no sense at all regarding the investigation, and there isn't a lot of it we can see any in this series! We are pre occupied with domestic situations involving the family live of the investigating officer. Less of it,and more serious police work could've helped ,since it isn't a drama but a thriller.

Subtitles doesn't help either.

Most of these series that result from Belgian French collaboration are really very low quality. It makes one wonder who are their target audience. The sound quality is poor and all the actors speak in muffled voices. The first episode is filled with the usual method of camera work, common to these series. There's a lot of close ups of eyes, mouths noses etc, and the actors spend inordinate amounts of time just staring into space. The older male actors always wear the most outrageous toupees, like the one worn by the old police inspector that looks like the thatched roof of a small African cottage! Whatever dialog is interspersed is just random snippets of conversation that add nothing to the story. The pace at which the narrative unfolds is so slow that the series becomes boring and viewer interest is lost!

Some parts were a little predictable and others were good twists. It had me thinking the whole time and never bored. The acting was well done. Some things were a little unbelievable but otherwise I enjoyed it. Decent thriller.