BBC
–
SERIES – There are no two like that. Broadcast last spring on British television and on Hulu in the USA, series Irish phenomenon “Normal People” arrives in France this Thursday, July 16 on the streaming platform Starzplay.
“Irresistible in these abnormal times”, according to CNN, the dramatic program “is just as dark and uncompromising, thanks to its elegant writing, production and acting, as the novel by Sally Rooney”, notes the magazine Variety at the time of its release. Critics are full of praise.
Since the broadcast of the first episode of this adaptation of the bestseller of the one sometimes considered as the “Jane Austen of the millennials”, subscriptions to the BBC Three channel have increased. Applications to join Trinity College Dublin, where part of the story is shot, too.
Watch the trailer for “Normal People” below
–
On Instagram, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal, who were still almost unknown before playing in “Normal People”, now have several hundred thousand subscribers. While they continue to multiply magazine covers, the young 22-year-old actress has just signed with UTA, one of the most prestigious agencies in Beverly Hills.
An “ordinary” pitch, not its treatment
In the series, she plays the character of Marianne, a lonely and sarcastic high school student. He, Connell, a popular sportsman from his hutch in Ireland whose mother works as a cleaning lady in the affluent family of the first. The twelve episodes follow their romance until the end of their studies.
The pitch may seem ordinary. His treatment, no. The series, for which Sally Rooney wrote the first six episodes, strikes with her realism and her loyalty to the work of the 28-year-old novelist. Normal People is a book “where every sentence […] seems coiled with potential danger, like a viper ready to strike, note Vanity Fair. Social tensions in their town of Carricklea, linked to Connell’s anxiety about his feeling of belonging to the working class and the way his comrades see him, bristle [la] tense and effective prose [de l’autrice].”
Close to the current youth, the characters are plural and “in line with [notre] time observe this other article from the magazine. Masculinity is studied in detail, to better reveal its flaws and limits. The female characters carry with them the weight of the expectations of a patriarchal society that is cracking, but yet not faltering. ”
Love at first sight
Marianne or Connell? Connell or Marianne? The two talk to us. “Marianne, it’s me. Or rather the me that I was when I was in college, confides Rebecca Amsellem in the feminist newsletter ‘Les Glorieuses’. Or rather the self of all introverts before having found people who look like them, who share the same world. I could spend whole days without talking to anyone. And as soon as a person spoke to me, whether pleasant or detestable, I clung to it so as not to plunge back into the abnormal. ”
She continues: “Without wanting to be emphatic, watching this series, reading this book, provokes this feeling so particular that one feels when one has a love at first sight friendly or in love. This feeling which makes us say to see low, for ourselves, as if we were afraid that admitting it would ruin everything: ‘That’s it, I am no longer alone in my world.’ ”
They love each other, separate, become “friends”, find other partners, find each other. Their oscillating relationship, full of contradictions, is familiar to us. Their sexual intimacy, too. The series has ten sex scenes. They are “an extension of the dialogue”, indicates to Slate the privacy coordinator for the Ita O’Brien series.
Her job is to ensure the physical and mental safety of the actors and actresses when filming sex scenes. Hand in hand with the directors, she choreographs the movements, but also communicates with the actors so that the shooting takes place with respect for everyone’s consent.
Familiar intimacy
The approach does not detract from the spontaneity of the game. On the contrary, it promotes the vulnerability of bodies facing each other, sometimes awkward at times like this. The scenes show through with honesty, sometimes sweetness, as in Marianne’s first experience when, before taking action, Connell makes sure that the young woman really wants to.
–
This rare and “refreshing” scene, according to Slate, is part of the writing process on the sexuality and intimacy of the author of the book, “somewhat at odds with the dominant discourse”, according to her words in the columns The Atlantic.
She specifies: “The sexual experiences of which I speak take place almost exclusively between people engaged in very intense relationships. They are not married, but really belong to the life of one or the other. That’s what interests me in privacy. ”
Here, no male gaze. Sexuality is no longer defined according to the male prism. “Normal People” widens the horizon of performances. “What I’m trying to do,” adds Sally Rooney, “is to show love and romance in all their overwhelming power, like the pleasure and desire that comes with it, in the delicate complexity of an ordinary life. ” On the screen, it’s nothing current.
See also on The HuffPost: “Little Fires Everywhere” avec Reese Witherspoon et Kerry Washington a sa bande-annonce
–
