2023-11-26 19:30:11
Léna (Marie Colomb), in the series “Follow” (2023), written by Sophie Dab, Florian Spitzer, Blanche Bigot and Delphine Chouraqui, directed by Louis Farge. 13TH STREET
13ÈME RUE – SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26 AT 9 P.M. – SERIES
Léna (Marie Colomb) belongs to the cohort of overqualified trainees. In a depressing office at the Paris Police Prefecture, she cohabits with two permanent “community managers” of this institution, who know a hundred times less than her about social networks, a world as familiar to the young woman as coral reefs to Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Like the latter, the community that Léna is supposed to help manage hides predators, in this case a serial killer who immediately fascinates the young woman, especially since the criminal befriends her on a social network.
It is always amusing to see how fiction authors circumvent the taboo that the Internet giants have imposed on the use of their brands, networks and search engines: the authors have chosen simplicity rather than pastiche and, according to one now classic method, online exchanges are displayed on the screen at the same time as the action progresses.
In the light of police mechanics, Follow hardly distinguishes itself from the run-of-the-mill French production. False leads accumulate, without always dispelling the suspicion of existing only to add yet another episode. Faced with a criminal who combines the sadistic sophistication of Hannibal Lecter (his victims take a long time to die, each murder is staged on the Internet) the digital know-how of Mr. Robotthe writers struggle to keep the investigators in the race, multiplying the inconsistencies, letting the plot unravel in the last episodes…
Deep, singular impression
And yet these six episodes leave a deep, singular impression. It is primarily due to this figure of a alone woman, isolated from the world by a kind of white noise made up of “posts”, “likes” and “follows”.
Marie Colomb, who we saw, among others, in the title role of Laëtitia (2020), goes from extreme vulnerability to arrogance in an instant, depending on the demands of the moment. The acuity of the gaze placed on the precariousness born of an interminable wait at the gates of real life takes precedence over the staging of crimes and the efforts to punish them. Around Léna, the scenario has placed a series of characters which range from the caricature of the old leather round with whom the intern shares her office to the tutelary figure of Commissioner Ruffin, played by Marilyne Canto – a somewhat senior civil servant. rigid, who tries, with the energy of desperation, to preserve his protégé (and nevertheless suspect) from the attentions of the killer, while trying to bring her into real life.
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