A porn actor on the return in search of love as he approaches his 50th birthday? On paper we didn't really believe it. This was without counting on the talent and generosity of Fred Hazan, writer, director and hero of the series which serves us on a set six short episodes of 26 minutes full of humor and tenderness. After "Seventh Heaven", OCS offers us this new French nugget put online this Thursday.
In "Need Love", Fred Hazan ("Dix Pour Cent", "Dfunny") slips into the skin of Marco Delgado, aka Marc Guttman, a comedian who has trouble finding his place in porn and who, to make ends meet, officiates as a bouncer in a Parisian nightclub. A somewhat naïve bachelor, neither happy nor sad, who drowns his melancholy in alcohol. This sad routine ends when, after several strange and lightning ailments, the doctors' verdict falls: Marco needs love or he will die!
For the first time in his life, the hero has no choice but to give meaning to his life. And here he is who arrives at his adoptive parents with whom he was not angry but whom he hardly saw since his choice to embark on the X. He definitely has no bowl, his father died two hours earlier, just before his arrival.
Far from superhero clichés
Faced with his mother, fantastic and hilarious Clementine Célarié as a widow not at all grieving and a mother just as disarming, he does not bend. Without flinching, he swallows the "we hardly ever talked about you with your father", "I got tired of you pretty quickly" or other kindnesses. We laugh a lot but we are also very moved by this man launched in this quest for love. "And you, do you love me?" he asks. "How do you expect me to answer such a question!" she replied.
When a 17-year-old girl comes to his house telling him that she is his daughter, Marco is cured. He immediately loves her with an unconditional paternal love. But life is obviously much more complicated. Wacky and moving, the series is devoured in one go. It is carried by a beautiful cast of actors, Gérard Jugnot as an agent of porn actors, Laëtitia Vercken, as a confidante roommate, or the young Anouk Villemin.
"Need for love" is also a very beautiful portrait of a man. A quinqua and very endearing to whom we can only wish well. Far from the clichés of superheroes that we find throughout the series. A nice guy with whom we turn in all directions the eternal question "can we live without love? ".
Editor's note:
4/5
"Need for Love", romantic comedy (2022) by and with Fred Hazan, Laëtitia Vercken Maxence Danet-Fauvel, Clémentine Célarié, Gérard Jugnot... 6 episodes of 26 minutes.
