Film: Under a Dark Sun (Soleil Noir)
Cast: Amina Ben Ismail, Isabelle Adjani, Thibault de Montalembert, Simon Ehrlacher, Guillaume Gouix, Ava Baya, Claire Romain, Nicolas Vaude, Louise Coldefy, Max Harter, Redouanne Harjane
Series Creator: Nils-Antoine Sambuc
Directors: Marie Jardillier, Edouard Salier
Rating: 2.5/5
Runtime: 6 eps/ app 45 min each
This six part series is an unbelievably twisty story of a murder that any of the characters could have committed. A young woman, twenty-something, Alba (Amina Ben Ismail) and her son, flee from the man she thinks is her father. En route to her escape, she receives an email about seasonal work on a flower farm. Once there, the owner, Mathieu Laserre, who doesn’t seem to know anything about the email, hires her anyway, as they are short on staff.
Next day Laserre is found dead and Alba is accused of murder. Looks like a setup doesn’t it? It also comes out that Alba is Laserre’s illegitimate daughter. The first episode being so tumultuous, the expectations get higher and the plot gets nastier with everyone in sight becoming a potential killer. ‘Knives Out’ anyone?
There’s an inheritance to be claimed and Alba, if she can prove her innocence with the help of her lawyer (Claire Romain), too could be in line for a share of the spoils along with Mrs Lassere (Isabelle Adjani) and her children.
There’s hardly any time to breathe let alone think, because the twists and turns in this murder mystery come at you at a furious pace. The plotting is ingenious, meant to keep the audience guessing and on their toes. If you bother to think even for a bit it wouldn’t make sense. Subplots are introduced and neglected along the way. Andreu, Josephine, Beatrice, Valentin, Leo, Lucie, Manon, Noor, Jacques, Hadrian, Nadia all seem to have an axe to grind and a shady unresolved past. Some are sexual predators, others malevolent, some overly greedy others just trying to keep a shady secret from coming out. Insinuations, suspicions, murders, kidnappings, one of the characters gets buried alive…there’s a lot happening here and not enough time is allowed for processing it. The perpetrator comes out of nowhere and you feel completely stupid for having to buy into it.
The open-ended ending suggests there’s a season 2 coming. But will it curry favor when Season 1 was so unsatisfactory? The racy eventful pace neglects to gather tension along the way so there’s not much satisfaction to be had. This is a frenzied drama that hopes to keep you guessing right to the very end. But since you don’t get to sympathize with any of the characters there’s little room for being invested. The numerous twists and turns in this series may seem interesting at first but after a point it gets tedious and irritating. Hollow thrills alone are not enough to keep an audience engrossed.
