- The heroes of La Casa de Pape l, whose season 4 is available on Netflix, are voluntary prisoners.
- Many scenarios use the closed door motif to build their plots.
- Two screenwriters explain to us how confinement is useful for building interesting characters.
Caught in their own trap. The locked up volunteers of La Casa de Papel are in dirty sheets while is online this Friday, season 4 of the Netflix series. For the record, the robbers with a big heart this time attacked the Bank of Spain, in the hope of having one of them released. Mission accomplished: Rio was returned to them. But in the meantime, the police, and especially the evil Alicia Sierra, have tightened their grip and, with Nairobi wounded by a bullet and the Professor wounded in the heart, Tokyo and his gang seem trapped like rats.
Season 4 therefore promises to be explosive and desperate. Less calm in fact than the first three parts which embroidered a scenario around the motif of the camera. Several closed doors to tell the truth. There was the robbery site, with hostages. That of the house where, in a flashback, we discover the robbers preparing their breakage by following the teacher's lessons. And, to a lesser extent, the closed door of the police tent.
A constraint as a starting point
While much of the country is confined, the scenario of La casa de Papel is rich in lessons on how a closed session can turn tragic. For screenwriters, on the other hand, the motive behind closed doors is a formidable playground. From Twelve angry men , in the deliberation room of a popular jury, to 8 Women , female variation of the 10 little negroes , via Funny Games , Panic Room or The girl and death , the cinema has often used the motif of the camera. In series, it is a little more rare - let us mention Servant , recently released on Apple TV + and Oz or Lost for nostalgics -, but still as effective.
“In camera is a constraint. And constraint can feed creativity. It is often a starting point to start imagining stories, "explains Antonin Martin-Hilbert, screenwriter for many French series including, lately, Criminal , on Netflix. “Writing a screenplay necessarily involves constraints at some point. A time constraint to start, depending on the format. The other essential limit that we quickly set when writing a screenplay is the number of characters. There may also be budgetary, decor, seasonal constraints… ”
All locked up
For Marine Francou, screenwriter for A French Village and director of writing for Engrenages , the closed door is, in a way, the materialization of a confinement that each character carries within him. “Any series deals with confinement in the psychological sense, at least the very good series. To come back to La Casa de Papel , you could say that each of the robbers carries within him the bars of his own prison. Rio frees it a little. Nairobi plunges even more, etc.
"This is what makes, in my opinion, the difference between a good series of entertainment and masterpieces, in which the characters seem trapped in their neuroses," explains Marine Francou. This is the case in Mad Men , in Succession … Throughout the seasons the characters always come up against the same neuroses. There are different tests, which often crescendo, but always the same confinement. And when the character finally manages to verbalize his neurosis, he leaves. And it's often the end of the series. For example the last 20 minutes of Mad Men. "
The Casa of Real Life
In the case of La Casa de Papel , we therefore have a slew of characters "locked up" in their neuroses (cuckoo knock-knock Tokyo) locked up for good together. Obviously, it's explosive. "The camera is interesting because it limits the number of interactions between characters. It is therefore necessary to push them to their limits, to deepen the situations, the scenes, rather than multiply them. It can lead the writers to complexify and deepen their characters. "
Caricatural as they are sometimes, the characters in La Casa de Papel touch us in their way of struggling with others and with themselves. "In writing, a character must be locked up to be interesting," analyzes Marine Francou. It is a strong dramatic issue because it blocks them in their relationships with others. And because that's how it happens in real life: the chances of freeing ourselves from our neuroses are quite low, even if we happen to progress… Of course, in fiction, it has to be more salient. "
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