2023-10-13 14:24:52
It’s time again for a really nice German-French envy debate. Fish rolls will not play a role (nothing against fish rolls; in all their undoubted variability, they are unfairly underexposed in international culinary terms as much as the fundamentally excellent Saumagen).
It’s about literature and film and elegance and lightness. That’s how today’s stories can be told brilliantly from the spirit of a brilliant yesterday.
It’s about Assane Diop. He is the hero of the French Netflix series “Lupin”. George Kay invented it. Since it started in 2021, it has remained in the top group of non-English Netflix productions (viewing rating: a good 100 million) and overall is not far away from “Damengambit”, for example, in the ratings list.
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Netflix-Serie „Lupin“
Kay intertwines the Paris of the fin de siècle with the Paris of the present perhaps even more elegantly than the makers of “Sherlock” short-circuited the London of Arthur Conan Doyle and the London of today.
Assane Diop is a master thief from the Paris underground. Someone who had nothing until his father, who came from Senegal, gave him the novels of a certain Maurice Leblanc as a socialization measure, which Assane learned more or less by heart.
They were about a master thief named Arséne Lupin. There are 24 volumes, the first was published in 1905, one part has not yet been translated into German, in one there is an encounter between Arséne and Sherlock, which could have consequences for “Lupin”. A slender man in a tailcoat with a monocle and an almost Fantomas-like versatility, who gets his main pleasure out of doing the most impossible things in the salons and villas of the rich in Paris. Steal tiaras with style.
“But they don’t see us.”
In terms of versatility, Assane can easily compete with Arséne, even though he is more of a Norman closet in stature. He is able to merge with any wall and disappear from everyone’s field of vision. Because he has an advantage over Arséne. “They look at us,” he says, “but they don’t see us.”
By “us” he means the black people. Playing practical jokes on the rich of contemporary France, robbing them of their diamonds and their security, is one of the main joys of his work as a master thief. He’s not that interested in the cheap money. At some point this makes him the Robin Hood of the Seine, an identification figure for people below the threshold of white people’s perception.
This makes him visible everywhere. Assane, that was the story of the first two seasons, becomes a public figure. And his family too. He has to go underground. With Aplomb he does that. And puts one of his main enemies in jail. Hubert Pellegrini has to swap his villa for a cell.
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Before we get lost in the praise of the third season, we should mention the man without whom “Lupin” would not exist. A Lupine enthusiast to whom George Kay wrote his multi-part series based on a physiognomy that at first glance wasn’t even delicate: Omar Sy. World-famous even in Germany as the crazy nurse of a French villa resident in “Pretty Best Friends”, the ideal James Bond if Idris Elba was unable to attend.
A man who enjoys every costume, who enjoys every transformation. Every alarm system collapses because of his laughter. And whose face, a fraction of a second later, is able to reflect the deepest despair.
Talk about desperation. Two years after the start of season 2, Assane Diop has now reappeared. They were difficult times. The media hunted down his family, but the police had long since forgotten him. Assane has a plan, a big one. He sets off with a black bead. And he should end with anonymity, security for himself and his loved ones from all persecutors. Unfortunately, he, who always calculates everything perfectly in advance, didn’t count on the ghosts of his past. They make you mobile.
Every episode is a coup
“Lupine 3” takes place on two time levels. In 1998, when France became World Cup champions in the final at home, Assane was barely 16, received mail from his mother in Senegal and was involved in criminal activities by a (black) boxing coach. And in 2021, when he tries to free himself using all of Lupin’s tricks.
Every episode tells a coup, every episode explains how he pulled it off again. With each episode the horizontal story becomes narrower. Until there is no way out. Everything ends as Assane wanted it to end. The cliff on which the third season could hang seems a long way off. But then Assane Diop receives a letter from his arch enemy Pellegrini.
Then first have a fish sandwich. Maybe while we’re chewing, we’ll think of a German novel series that could compete with Arséne Lupine. Or an actor who could match Omar Sy in charisma. We probably can’t eat enough fish sandwiches. Because they don’t exist. France, you have it better.
#Netflix #series #Lupin #France