TF1 launches this Monday “Visions”, its new event series with Louane Emera, Soufiane Guerrab (“Lupin”), and Jean-Hugues Anglade. An unoriginal but successful thriller tinged with fantasy, about a child who shows strange gifts linked to an investigation.
What is it about ?
While a little girl barely twelve years old disappears, Diego, eight years old, manifests strange visions which alert the captain of the gendarmerie in charge of the investigation, Romain, and especially his companion, Sarah, a young psychologist. What if what Diego sees or draws was linked to this disappearance?
Every Monday at 9:10 p.m. on TF1 from May 16, and already available on Salto
6 episodes seen out of 6
Who is it with?
Revealed by the show The Voice and Caesarized in 2015 for her performance in the film La Famille Bélier, the singer and actress Louane landed her first role on television thanks to Visions. She lends her features to Sarah Sauvant, a young psychologist who will take a close interest in Diego’s faculties and will forge a very strong relationship with him.
Opposite her, TF1 viewers will find Soufiane Guerrab, one of the stars of Lupine on Netflix, recently seen at the cinema in De bas scène and Les Promesses, in the role of Romain, the heroine’s cop companion, who is in charge of the investigation into the disappearance of little Lily.
Jean-Hugues Anglade, Marie-Ange Casta (Contrary winds), Julien Boisselier, Max Boublil, Anne Marivin, back on the front page after Rebecca, Robinson Stevenin, Sophie Cattani (Laying bare), and the young Léon Durieux (Loin de chez moi) in the skin of Diego complete the distribution of this event mini-series in six episodes.
Olivier Martino/TF1
Well worth a look ?
Very fashionable on the small screen a few years ago, the series on the background of the disappearance of children or adolescents, from Secret d’Elise to La Forêt, via Le Mystère du lac and Malaterra, would they have to once again on a roll following the resounding success of La Promesse at the start of last year?
In any case, this is what Visions may suggest, which, despite its elements of Sixth Sense fantasy, ticks all the boxes of the thriller made in TF1 in a news item fashion (we inevitably think of the disappearance of little Maëlys). And does it rather well even if the series worn by Louane does not reach the same heights of quality as The Promise.
Directed by Akim Isker, to him we owe the moving TV movie Nobody’s Child, and written by Jeanne Le Guillou and Bruno Dega, who know a lot about thrillers and thrillers after Le Tueur du lac, Gloria, or They were 10, Visions deploys in any case a well-crafted plot, which multiplies the cliffhangers at the end of episodes as well as the false leads as to the identity of Lily’s murderer.
And if we are obviously interested in the purely police investigation of Romain – excellent and magnetic Soufiane Guerrab – who gradually understands that he is dealing with a serial killer who has already killed in the past, the series above all tries to stand out with its other counterpart, which is more psychological.
Francois Lefebvre/TF1
Indeed, the strength of Visions lies mainly in its ability to use its central fantastic element – Diego can communicate with the dead – to evoke the theme of difference and to explore the flaws and wounds of its heroine, Sarah, who will find herself closely linked to Diego. Because if Diego “sees people who are dead”, he also knows things about his shrink’s past that only the young woman played by Louane is supposed to know.
Louane Emera and Léon Durieux form a duo to which one attaches easily, even when the link which unites them by strange circumstances is growing. The cast of the series is also generally in tune, with also very good performances from Marie-Ange Casta, Anne Marivin, and Julien Boisselier.
Finally, all that can be criticized for Visions is to offer a detective plot that is a little too classic on the merits, if we disregard Diego’s paranormal faculties. And to handle his story with a (too?) slow pace that could disconcert more than one and risks costing the channel viewers from one evening to another. Even from one episode to another.
But the talent of the actors – Louane and Soufiane Guerrab in the lead -, the very fine production of Akim Isker, the bewitching aesthetics of the whole, and a very successful last episode all the same make Visions a series that we recommend you. Especially since it proves that the fantastic has its place as a bonus on a major French channel, even in small touches.
It only remains to hope that Prometheus, which will arrive in the coming months on TF1 with Camille Lou and Odile Vuillemin in the main roles, will be able to go there even more frankly in the strange and the paranormal.