Why will “Possessions”, the new Canal + series, bewitch you?

Natalie (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) is the heroine of "Possessions" on Canal +.

-

• Possessions, a new original creation from Canal +, is broadcast this Monday at 9:05 p.m.

• This series follows Natalie, a young French expatriate in Israel, accused of having murdered her husband on his wedding night.

• Lost and vulnerable woman, or fearfully manipulative?

  Karim (Reda Kateb), French diplomat responsible for providing on-site assistance to nationals in difficulty, fascinated by Natalie, will improvise an investigator.

• The author Valérie Zenatti, the co-writer of this series, deciphers this thriller with fantastic accents, the mystery of which will haunt you.

When the best day of his life turns into a bloodbath.

In the original Franco-Israeli creation

, broadcast this Monday on Canal +, Natalie (the revelation Nadia Tereszkiewicz), a young Frenchwoman of Sephardic origin, marries Eran somewhere in the Negev, in Israel.

As tradition dictates, the lights go out when the two newlyweds are about to cut the show.

When they light up again, Eran lies on the ground, his throat slit.

"What have you done to him?"

», Asks Natalie, in her white dress stained with hemoglobin, holding the bloody knife in her hand ... The French State sends the vice-consul of France (Reda Kateb, in a convincing counter-employment) to bring assistance to the young widow, accused of having killed her husband.

The investigation begins and the viewers are in turn "possessed".

Why ?

Answer in five arguments

"Not just the famous" Whodunit ""

Who killed Eran?

If the investigation around the murder of the young husband serves as a starting point for the plot imagined by the Israeli screenwriter Shachar Magen (

) and the author and screenwriter Valérie Zenatti,

turns out to be much more complex than a simple polar.

"At the beginning of the writing, we said to ourselves that it shouldn't be just the famous" Whodunit "," says Valérie Zenatti to

.

The more the story progresses, the more the mystery surrounding the disturbing Natalie and her disturbing family thickens.

There is her mother, (Dominique Valadié), the anguished and superstitious Rosa, her father (Tchéky Karyo), the ambiguous and effaced Joël, her two sisters (Judith Chemla and Aloïse Sauvage) and Louisa (Ariane Ascaride), the friend of her mother who shares her fear of the evil eye.

And the groom's family: "What shines through the Israeli characters is a kind of raw complexity of stripping," comments the screenwriter.

"Adapting an ancient myth from Central Europe"

“The adventure began when Shachar Magen met the producers of Haut et Court with an idea which was to adapt an ancient myth from Central Europe of the 19th century, that of the Dibbouk, and to make a very free adaptation. and contemporary ”, explains the French screenwriter.

In Jewish and Kabbalistic mythology, a dibbouk is a spirit or demon that inhabits an individual's body.

The murder of Eran will awaken the demons of all those who are directly or indirectly linked to the drama.

"Interrogating the Cartesian vision and the irrational vision"

Valérie Zenatti arrives on the project a few weeks later.

Shachar Magen “needed a French co-scriptwriter.

I happen to be a writer and screenwriter.

I am also bilingual French Hebrew because I spent my teenage years in Israel in Beer-Sheva, where part of the action of the series takes place ”, remembers the one who is pleased to have had“ love at first sight professional ”.

If the story takes place in Israel, in the middle of the Negev desert, this land full of beliefs, is no accident.

“Our initial intention was to question the Cartesian vision and the irrational or mystical vision of an event,” underlines the screenwriter.

Valérie Zenatti and Shachar Magen have fun blurring the lines.

"The spectator can be caught in this conflict and wonder" is this a realistic or fantastic series "", analyzes Valérie Zenatti.

"The meeting between" Rosemary's Baby "and a western by Sergio Leone"

“We touched on the idea that the series could take place in France.

Finally, it seemed to us in relation to its two aspects, the rational and the irrational, of the tradition and the modernity, and also in relation to a form of violence and perhaps of paranoia, that it was interesting. to mix Israel and France, ”says the screenwriter.

And to add: “For us the desert is the place where we find ourselves naked and where there is no escape.

"The Possessions series is haunted by the desert landscapes of the Negev, the decrepit city of Beer-Shiva, the haunting soundtrack of HiTnRuN and the troubled aura of Israel, a land of blurred borders," a land where everything is pushed to the extreme ".

For the director Thomas Vincent, to whom we owe the staging of the

series 

,

it is “the meeting between 

and a western by Sergio Leone”.

“Rosemary's Baby was one of the references we had in mind from the start, just like

 ” recalls Valérie Zenatti.

"An enigmatic heroine"

"The series raises the question of identity, the relationship to who we are and what we accept to see in ourselves or not," sums up the screenwriter.

There is the character of Karim, this French diplomat played by Reda Kateb, "with the story that we can guess, if only by his name and by what people also bring him back", but especially that by Natalie, the fascinating heroine who recalls the elusive Madeleine of

Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece.

“She's a pretty girl that everyone sees as such, and on which everyone has projections, but who remains enigmatic.

She may not even know who she is, ”analyzes Valérie Zenatti.

And to continue: “The idea was to lead her from the enigma to clairvoyance on herself and also to a form of emancipation, she rebels in a way against the projections that are made on her.

"

Possessions

thus questions the hold of myths and beliefs, that of men over women and that of the family unit over the individual.

There is no doubt that

s, a journey that is both mystical and Cartesian, will also know how to “possess” its viewers.

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