Four years after “Jonas”, director Christophe Charrier returns to Arte with “The Patient”, a psychological and psychoanalytical thriller tinged with horror not to be missed. Which reveals Txomin Vergez, a young actor to follow closely.
What is it about ?
Thomas wakes up in the hospital after three years in a coma. Amnesiac, the young man discovers that he is the only survivor of the massacre of his family and that his sister Laura has disappeared.
Helped by psychologist Anna Kieffer, Thomas tries to reconstruct his memories to unmask the murderer and find Laura. Over the sessions, the past and its dark mysteries come to the surface and plunge Thomas into an agonizing mental labyrinth.
Friday October 28 at 8:55 p.m. on Arte, and available until November 26 on arte.tv
Who is it with?
To embody Thomas, the tormented young hero of the TV movie The Patient, director Christophe Charrier (Jonas) has set his sights on actor Txomin Vergez, who thus lands his first role on screen and is already establishing himself as a revelation to follow. from close.
Facing him is Clotilde Hesme, seen recently in season 2 of HPI, who plays the psychologist who will try to help Thomas by confronting him with the painful memories of his past.
A nice duo that is completed by Audrey Dana (Under the girls’ skirts, Human things), Rebecca Williams (The 7 lives of Léa), Stéphane Rideau (The wild reeds), Matthieu Lucci (L’Atelier), Alex Lawther ( The End Of The F***ing World) and Baptiste Carrion-Weiss (La Maison d’en face).
Stromboli Movies 2022
Well worth a look ?
Four years after the punchy TV movie Jonas, worn by Félix Maritaud and multi-award winning at the La Rochelle Festival in 2018, director Christophe Charrier returns, on Arte always, with The Patient, a new drama tinged with thriller which is revealed once again. more extremely daring. In a French television landscape which rarely dares, unlike cinema, the real artistic biases.
After exploring adolescent trauma, Christophe Charrier adapts a graphic novel by Timothé Le Boucher with screenwriter Elodie Namer and focuses on the suffering spirit of a young man – Thomas – the only survivor of the massacre of his family.
Going back and forth between past and present, the filmmaker continues to amaze with his staging ideas and his visual effects (notably through a vertigo of the image and shots that echo the psychological state in fragments of the hero). And gradually reveals the wounds that led to this tragedy.
Beginning almost like a harrowing horror film, with its figure of the killer who has just slaughtered almost an entire family, The Patient quickly mutates into a clever psychological and psychoanalytical thriller.
Fanny De Gouville – Stromboli Films
In a gloomy and disturbing hospital, the story associates Thomas with a somewhat strange shrink portrayed to perfection by Clotilde Hesme, who will do her best to push the young man into the entrenchments of his labyrinthine mind, in order to understand what is going on. really happened on that fateful night. And to manage to unmask the murderer and find Laura, Thomas’ sister who has mysteriously disappeared.
Also carried by the stressful soundtrack by Alex Beaupain, who had already worked on Jonas, the new TV movie by Christophe Charrier obviously owes a lot to its actors. Audrey Dana is perfect in the role of Thomas’s mother, who always seems on the edge of the abyss, while the young Txomin Vergez literally bursts the screen in the skin of this famous “patient” who gets lost in the corridors of his spirit and difficulty in discerning the true from the false.
We can only regret the sometimes somewhat slow pace of this thriller. But this is still a real artistic choice, as the pieces of the puzzle come together little by little until they make complete sense.
Then comes the final revelation which allows the viewer to understand that the breaths that punctuate the scenario were simply intended to play with him and keep him away from the horror.
To better bring him back to the drama and this event that changed everything. Like an uppercut whose tragic charge we fully feel until the last seconds of this inhabited and very successful TV movie.