PARIS (awp/afp) – The team of the “Bazar de la Charité”, Audrey Fleurot in the lead, dives into the beginning of the Great War from Monday on TF1 with “Les Combattantes”, a feminist and romantic fresco once again co -financed by Netflix and La Une, which bets big.
Prostitute in search of a loved one, nurse chased by a policeman, nun in the midst of a crisis of faith and wife forced to manage her husband’s factory…
This mini-series in eight 52-minute episodes retraces the fictional but “out of the ordinary” destinies of four heroines, played by Audrey Fleurot, Camille Lou and Julie de Bona, the “bazaar” trio, joined by Sofia Essaïdi, as well as Sandrine Bonnaire, Tchéky Karyo, Laurent Gerra and Tom Leeb.
“Le Bazar de la Charité” took place in Paris at the twilight of the 19th century, starting from a fire which really ravaged the room of the same name, killing more than 120 people, mainly women.
With “Les Combattantes”, TF1 this time takes viewers to the Vosges, in September 1914, during the war of movement which preceded that of the trenches and “which we see very little in the films”, recalled producer Iris Bucher at a press conference in June.
But the recipe remains the same: romance, manipulations, spectacular costumes and sets, direction by Alexandre Laurent… and above all an extraordinary budget for a French television production, of more than 20 million euros, via a “winning deal -winner” with Netflix, according to Iris Bucher.
Inaugurated with “le Bazar” (more than 17 million euros), this type of partnership allows TF1 to raise its ambitions while radiating internationally, abounds its artistic director of French fiction, Anne Viau.
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Watched by more than 6 million viewers on average live in France and broadcast worldwide, “Le Bazar de la Charité” has thus been the subject of remakes in Turkey and Italy, she recalls.
Enough to justify the “anthology” suite (with renewed characters and plots) imagined from the project of a young author, Cécile Lorne.
Especially since the actresses of the first opus did not hesitate to “commit”, pushed by “the desire to find each other” and by the “pledge of quality” represented by the duo Bucher / Laurent, explained Audrey Fleurot, also seduced by an important period “sociologically”.
“I find it great that we are talking about women who at that time had difficulty, even more obviously than today, finding their place in positions that are a priori male”, added to AFP Sofia Essaïdi, former candidate of the Star Academy, soon to the cinema in “Nostalgia”.
The male characters are not forgotten, however, and are even more fleshed out than in “the Bazaar”.
If the director Alexandre Laurent has made every effort not to fall into the “over-violence” specific to war, the series includes certain rather crude scenes, in particular sexual ones.
“It’s been some time that in the fiction of TF1 we dare to push the cursors” to seduce an audience “educated in series”, recognizes Anne Viau.
It remains to be seen if he will follow. The stakes are high for TF1, which has just canceled its marriage with M6 and is seeing its audiences impacted by its conflict with Canal+, which has stopped broadcasting the group’s channels.
However, the competition promises to be tough against “Love is in the meadow” on M6 and the new season of “Rivières pourpres” on France 2.
“I am extremely serene”, assured Anne Viau in June, confident in her “nugget”.
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