«Family Business», an astonishing Netflix series2 reading minutes

Cinema Wednesdays - Jonas Follonier

Available on Netflix, the new French series Family Business is both highly effective and clumsy. Boasting an impressive cast (Gérard Darmon, Julia Piaton, Liliane Rovère), it suffers from an unexpected infantilism. Verdict.

Are series the future of cinema? We put the question to specialists in the field when Le Regard Libre had organized a round-table discussion on the subject. When you look at some of the widely viewed American creations, it's hard to imagine any positive future. But that's not to say that series aren't important in today's audiovisual landscape. And in the world of series itself, Netflix is a phenomenon that cannot be ignored.

A new French production appeared on the platform on June 28. Like most Netflix productions, the first season of Family Business, made up of six thirty-minute episodes, is unquestionably effective. It's a credit to the American style that it has been able to find the ingredients for a subject that is never boring: a simple, coherent aesthetic, a neat, homogeneous soundtrack, opening credits that get straight to the point, and first scenes that immediately set up the plot and the characters.

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Igor Gotesman's series is no exception to the rule, and it's all to the good that prestigious actors such as Gérard Darmon and Liliane Rovère have agreed to take part in a Netflix series about a family going into the (soon-to-be) legal cannabis business. But had they read the dialogue before signing the contract? While the basic plot is pleasant, some of the characters' outbursts spoil it all by throwing in some heavy-handed phrases worthy of pre-adolescent humor.

Above all, there's one element in particular that stuns the viewer: the obsession with farts, feet, piss and other feces. There's a kind of «scatocracy» in the dialogues that, with a single bad word, makes certain scenes lose all their flavor. I'm not exaggerating: you don't understand the director's intentions with this low-grade, uncomfortable humor that's very recurrent in this first season. If the mix of Netflix production and French storytelling was good news, the resulting grimy comedy is surprising and disappointing. I'm sure you'll agree that we've seen a better combination than the beauf-dèg’.

This in no way prevents Family Business many other great qualities that its production and its casting. For example, the story, set against a backdrop of legalized cannabis and mixed marriages between Jews and North Africans, is rooted in French current affairs. Or, last but not least, the beauty of the photography on numerous occasions, with remarkable camera sweeps and visual transitions. Finally, the soft electro music by Paul-Marie Barbier and Julien Grunberg creates a pleasant, familiar atmosphere. A welcome change from harp chords.

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Netflix