[ad_1]
In 2011, a starring tour in the French hit film “The Intouchables” propelled Omar Sy to César for Best Actor and a budding career in Hollywood, with roles in “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and “Jurassic World”.
This success made Sy, born near Paris to immigrant parents from West Africa, the kind of star that a powerful production company like Gaumont might question about his dream roles.
“If I was British I would have said James Bond, but since I’m French I said Lupine,” Sy said on a recent video call, in French, from her home in Los Angeles. “He’s a player, he’s smart, he flies, he’s surrounded by women. Plus, he’s a character who plays characters. For an actor, he is the best.
A few years after that conversation with Gaumont, a five-episode episode of Sy’s new French-language series, “Lupine,” debuted on Netflix. Less than a week later, the show, a stylish caper set in the heart of Paris, became the streamer’s second most popular title in the United States, the first time a French series debuted in the Top 10, according to Netflix. A second installment has been shot and should follow later this year.
Except that there is a twist: Arsène Lupine is not a character in the series that bears his name – at least not in the flesh.
But now, many American readers are probably asking, “Wait … Lup-who?”
Created by French writer Maurice Leblanc in 1905, Arsène Lupine is an elite member of the gang of delicious thieves known as the Gentleman Thieves. Like Thomas Crown, Danny Ocean, Simon Templar, and (to include a nice woman) Selina Kyle, Lupine is sleek and efficient. He prefers disguise and persuasion to violence and is so dashing that his victims almost thank him for the honor of being robbed.
The hero of many short films and novels, Lupine was first seen as the French answer to a certain British detective; Leblanc even brazenly wrote unauthorized crossover stories featuring a Herlock Shears. France alone has produced several television adaptations and films about the thief. An entire generation can still sing the theme song of the series which took place in 1971-74. A brilliant 2004 film starred Romain Duris.
Lupine is also a popular character in Japan, where in the 1960s manga artist Kazuhiko Kato, known by his pen name, Monkey Punch, invented a grandson named Lupine III. This Lupine has become the subject of several anime adaptations, including Hayao Miyazaki’s feature debut, “Lupine III: Cagliostro’s Castle”, and the recent 3-D release “Lupine III: The First”.
Sy, 42, plays not Lupine but a good-natured Parisian named Assane Diop, the son of a Senegalese immigrant, who idolizes the fictitious thief. Sy, who is also recognized as an artistic producer, admitted that when he first proposed to base a project on Lupine, he mostly knew the character’s reputation.
“Honestly, it was just something you had to know, part of the culture,” he says. “Later, I connected the dots between books, TV shows I saw as a kid, and some manga. I became totally addicted while working on “Lupine”. “
George Kay (“Criminal”), the British showrunner and creator of the series, said in a video chat that he was more familiar with other early 20th century pop culture creations like Sherlock Holmes, the Scarlet Pimpernel or AJ Raffles when he was brought in.
“But when I was told Netflix wanted to do it with Omar Sy, he was attached, the combination of those two things made me really interesting,” Kay said. “Because there are a lot of things about Lupine that I like: the tips, the downsides.”
French filmmaker Louis Leterrier (“The Transporter”, “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance”), who directed the first three episodes of “Lupine”, was an early member of the creative team, before the idea was not presented to Netflix. (The series was produced by Gaumont for Netflix.) He said it took a bit of time to focus on a concept.
“Our first step was to figure out where we wanted to go,” Leterrier said on a video call. “Is Omar really playing Lupine?” Is it contemporary or classic? “
In the end, “George Kay came up with an idea that we all loved,” he added. “We wanted to see Omar in all his humanity and his experience of myth, rather than calling him Arsene Lupine and doing something that had already been done.
When we meet Assane de Sy, he is obsessed with revenge for his widowed father (Fargass Assandé), who died 25 years earlier. The elder Diop, who worked hard to give his son the tools he needed to succeed in French society (starting with the importance of correct spelling), committed suicide in prison after being charged of theft, leaving young Assane orphaned. Assane’s most precious possession became a Lupine Book given to her by her father, a gift that would shape her entire life. (The series is captioned “In the shadow of Arsene”.)
Like Leblanc’s rapscallion, the adult Assane flies and pulls out jams thanks to its silvery tongue and shape-shifting talent. But don’t expect hyper-realistic ‘Mission: Impossible’ latex masks – Assane is decidedly low-tech, fleet-worthy of the series, deliberately folded the old-fashioned way.
“Lupine was a keen observer of society and we wanted Assane to be the same,” said Sy. “He doesn’t need much to disguise himself: he joins the kind of people who don’t stand out, and he disappears.”
When Assane sets out to slip off a heavily guarded necklace in the Louvre, for example, he alternates between hiding as a janitor and posing as a wealthy art lover participating in an auction. In the first case, he becomes invisible, a black among many others; in the second, he exploits the fact that he stands out in a sea of white faces, distracting his marks.
“I really liked the ‘gentleman thief’ aspect but wanted to subvert it and give it a social angle,” said Leterrier. “I found the idea of a 6-foot-2 black man sneaking into high society and the underworld interesting.”
Kay jumped at the chance to slip in some statements without being too harsh. “Having a Franco-African ethnic leadership is very important,” he said. “The character’s targets are the French establishment and the old school, and we play these dramas in these very classic Parisian settings.
Indeed, Assane is very aware of the way mainstream French society perceives him, and he often uses these prejudices to deceive his victims. The show also sends a sneaky message by ensuring that the most dedicated fans of the Lupine books are of African and North African descent, or biracial.
For Sy, “it’s about giving a new face to what it means to be French today,” he said. “The archetype has changed.”
Whether cultural or family, the idea of transmission runs throughout the show. For fans of the original stories, Easter eggs abound. On a more intimate level, Assane inherits his father’s Lupine obsession. He then passes it on to his own teenage son, Raoul (Etan Simon), whose mother is white, as a way to connect and smooth out a sometimes difficult relationship.
“This is my first time playing this kind of father, who has a lot of baggage and questions,” said Sy, who has five children of his own. “I am still interested in fatherhood. It’s not easy, and you don’t know if you were a good dad or a bad dad until your kids are grown up.
For Sy, Leblanc’s old stories serve as a kind of bridge in the series. The Lupine book helps Assane relate not only to his father but his surroundings as well, and Assane wants him to have the same impact on Raoul. Culture, like family, is a means of belonging.
“The idea of inheritance moves me – what do we remember and what do we pass on?” he said, “To me, that’s the real meaning of life, what makes us human.”
[ad_2]
Source link