Finally, a pleasing risk-taking.
France 2 is launching the unclassifiable Vortex
tonight
, a miniseries at the confluence of thriller, science fiction and romance.
Based on an idea by successful novelist Franck Thilliez, screenwriters Camille Couasse and Sarah Farkas weave an idyll on the borders of reality between Brest police captain Ludovic (the star of
Balthazar
, Tomer Sisley) and his first wife, Mélanie (Camille Claris) .
This young judge lost her life in what looked like an accidental fall from a cliff in July 1998. Twenty-seven years later, in 2025, a corpse found on the same beach, wearing a jewel identical to that having belonged to his ex-wife, suggests a homicide.
By a serial killer?
Thanks to the reconstitution of this crime scene in virtual reality, a temporal fault opens.
By putting on his connected glasses, Ludovic finds, on this same shore, Mélanie, a few days before his death.
Will he be able to change the course of events in order to save Mélanie without ransacking the home he has rebuilt with Parvanna, an Iranian doctor (Zineb Triki,
The Legends Office
).
She gave him a son, Samuel, and she also raised with him Juliette, the daughter that Ludovic had with Mélanie.
In addition to the astonishing mix of genres, this series, produced by the intrepid Iris Bucher
(Les Combattantes
,
Le Bazar de la Charité
) will make a mark with the use of the same LED screen wall technology used by Disney in
The Mandalorian.
Vortex
integrates this principle of virtual reality into its framework.
Thus the murder beach, in Brittany, was photographed at 360 degrees, before filming.
The shots have been reassembled to reconstruct it and create the most perfect trompe-l'oeil.
To discover
TV Magazine poll
:
Jean-Luc Reichmann elected favorite host of the French
interior decay
Here, the investigation is only an amuse-bouche.
The main subject revolves around this eternal temptation: can we rewrite our past and, through this Faustian pact, put our existence back on the right trajectory?
If yes, at what price?
The references nestle on the side of
Minority Report
or
Un jour sans fin
.
In his attempt to rewrite history, Ludovic will release a butterfly effect that turns into a hurricane.
Afraid of meeting her killer if she leaves her home, Mélanie steals away from a dinner party in 1998. This will not be without consequences.
For his part, with his knowledge of the future, the hero transmits information that makes it possible to solve cases two decades in advance.
By dint of changing the circumstances, he risks erasing Parvanna from his existence.
But how to choose between two women he loves and two children he adores?
For Samuel to see the light of day, Mélanie must no longer be of this world.
The more Ludovic changes events, the more paranoia overtakes him, the more he abandons those around him on a daily basis.
This present without Melanie is suddenly dull.
His inner decay is reflected in the increasingly extreme consequences of his actions.
Nor is Melanie driven by the most altruistic motivations regarding Parvanna.
At the end,
Vortex
runs out of steam and its temporal paradoxes bloat the criminal enigma.
But, philosophically, the series is no less captivating.
“Is it always a good idea to want to correct a traumatic event?
From this pain, can another world, something that transforms you, also arise?
ask Camille Couasse
and Sarah Farkas.
In their love triangle, which ignores space and time, the screenwriters fortunately did not attempt to give a simple answer to a dilemma that never is.
