Do not attack "Sissi the Empress" who wants! Christmas cathodic candy for decades starring the sublime Romy Schneider and Karlheinz Böhm, alias Franz, the film has competition. Almost 65 years later, Elisabeth is back on the small screen as a mini-series from this Thursday, December 22 at 9:05 p.m. on TF1. And on paper, it was tempting: “An adaptation that dust off the myth. We savored in advance ready to swallow the first three episodes in one go. Ouch. Even if we had promised ourselves to leave aside the couple of the cult saga and to avoid comparisons, the disappointment is strong.
Neither the rather bland performance of the actors and even less Sissi as a "mischievous, strong, nonconformist and modern" woman convinced us.
We even got bored and we skip our turn for the next three episodes.
German series directed by Sven Bohse, "Sissi" is worn by Swiss American actress Dominique Devenport, who plays the future Empress of Austria, and by German actor Jannik Schümann, in the role of her husband.
They are of course beautiful and desirable as legend has it.
Neither suspense nor emotion at the rendezvous
This adaptation which, like that of the 60s, is largely and freely inspired by the life of the Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, Bohemia and Lombardy-Veneto, bet on a feminist and naughty Sissi. After all, why would sexuality be taboo at the Austrian court at the end of the 19th century? Except that the daring scenes are sorely lacking in relief and sensuality. Like the one on which the series opens where the young Duchess of Bavaria finds herself in the middle of an erotic dream moaning in her bed before her sister Hélène surprises her. Or the one where she became Empress, Sissi takes her husband's favorite prostitute as her lady-in-waiting, who arrives at court with her wooden sex toys ...
Because if Sissi, who is only 15 years old, is inexperienced, the man she falls head over heels in love with is a regular in Austrian brothels.
Franz version 2021 is powerful and desirable and he cultivates a dark side that is not always very likable.
To spice up the series, the emperor is haunted by the widow of a Hungarian prisoner he did not want to pardon.
The latter cursed him, predicting that all those he loved will die ... A ritornello that comes back regularly but neither the suspense nor the emotion are there.
Fortunately this big production is saved by the atmosphere, the sets and the costumes.
As for the Austro-Hungarian geopolitical context which is at the heart of Sissi's rise in Europe, we are also unsatisfied.
EDITOR'S NOTE 2/5
“Sissi”,
by Sven Bohse with Dominique Devenport, Jannik Schümann… 6 episodes of 50 minutes