UA seemingly uneventful village troubled by the disappearance of a little girl. An investigation that skates. Secrets unearthed. For his new miniseries, Visions, TF1, certainly relying on the proverb that the best soups are prepared in old pots, does not play the risk-taking card. Certainly, she got her hands dirty by hiring a slew of experienced actors to bring the inhabitants of this small, very French village to life. Jean-Hugues Anglade, Soufiane Guerrab, Anne Marivin, Julien Boisselier, Max Boublil, Sagamore Stévenin surround Louane Emera, able to attract a younger audience to the family screen than usual. The other small novelty of the recipe is to have crossed with a touch of fantasy this detective series, with the introduction in the frame, of a child who communicates with the dead. Perfect recipe? Yes, at least on paper.
Direction therefore the stifling torpor of a small village in the south of France. Life flows there like a seemingly calm river. Under a blazing sun. Until this birthday party, watered, bringing together almost all of its inhabitants, during which a child disappears. The investigation is entrusted to Romain Sauvant, a freshly transferred gendarmerie captain (Soufiane Guerrab), who has just arrived in the region with his partner Sarah (Louane Emera), a child psychologist.
A little air of Sixth Sense
The series begins rather well and lazily unfolds a very classic plot, underpinned by the eternal question inherent in any detective series: but who is the culprit? Then the tracks become tangled uselessly to gradually run out… But the answer seems to reside somewhere in the mind of an 8-year-old kid, Diego (Léon Durieux), incidentally the victim’s cousin. , who, as we will see at the speed of a tractor bogged down in a rut, has the gifts of a medium and very often finds himself confined to his room with a crowd of dead people who have come to deliver a few messages to him. Fantastic, yes… but not fantastic!
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A kid who talks to dead people… Do not mention any reference to the film Sixth Sense who, in 1999, saw a child bond with his shrink, dead, played by Bruce Willis! Screenwriters Jeanne Le Guillou and Bruno Dega (The Lake Killer) even seem surprised that we can make the link between the two works, they didn’t even think about it. Of which act. Regardless, the principle could have been effective, but something is wrong in these six episodes.
Léon Durieux, the young actor who gives life to this little primary school medium, is certainly not at fault, and even turns out to be quite convincing, a challenge when you have to carry a 6 x 52 minute film on your small shoulders. The fault is to be found rather on the side of the scenario which accumulates the twists of the genre, until the overdose, at the risk of losing credibility. And to come across in this quiet village, a pedophile doctor, the courageous mother of an autistic child (Anne Marivin, wonderful), a battered woman, a cop embroiled in an embarrassing affair of adultery and a psychologist herself confronted with a repressed past, shelled without finesse throughout the six episodes, thanks to clumsy flashbacks. Without forgetting a kid who we discover, overnight, that he makes bizarre drawings and that he talks to himself.
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In short, it is hard to believe. Just as it is difficult to find very credible Louane Emera – who here embodies her first role in a TV series, 8 years later The Aries Family – in the role, from the height of her 25 years, of the psychologist with a big heart. Especially since it is largely outstripped in its interminable quest for the truth, by the viewer who, in the absence of being a medium, has long learned to read between scenes. And as the culprit is obviously not to be sought among the obvious suspects, but rather towards the characters left aside by the plot, even the outcome, a bit sloppy, leaves the impression of having wasted its time a little.