Cork: a favorite bottled by Éléonore Costes (review)

The Golden Mustache alum offers her comedic version of “Just the End of the World.” A particularly successful short format series.

Small format, large series. In 8 episodes of 14 minutes, the videographer Éléonore Costes achieves a real tour de force with Corka gem to discover on Arte.tv from today.

A jack-of-all-trades artist (screenwriter, actress, director, etc.) notably revealed when she joined Golden Mustache, Éléonore Costes still puts a lot of herself into Cork, so much so that we don't really know what part is autobiographical and what part is pure fiction… The story of Lolo (impeccably played by Costes herself), an actress who works hard to make his hole in a collective of comedians who work on YouTube (well, well) and manage to land the leading role in a feature film whose filming is planned in Tokyo. But what should be a consecration becomes a case of conscience: at the same time, her father announces to her and her pregnant sister (Raphaëlle Costeshis real sister, whose energy recalls Camille Chamoux) that he has cancer and that he definitely does not want to undergo treatment.

As a big, stubborn kid, he decided to go to Switzerland to be euthanized. Should she stay and spend her last months with him or go to Japan? The beginning of troubles and a quest for identity…

Really brilliant in his way of dealing with the theme of the dysfunctional family through comedy (we laugh a lot), Cork is embodied by a casting of astonishing naturalness, even in the most bizarre scenes. A series on the unsaid, a sort of Just the end of the world (by Xavier Dolan) as a joke, where feelings accumulate (love and hatred) and which no one can express calmly. Between two scenes where we don't listen to each other, Éléonore Costes captures all the little tics that betray unease (an obsession with the crash of the Rio-Paris flight; the cigarette and the food which are central to the affair) and the suffering tantrums (the mother, a chatterbox , furious at the printer that is messing up). The pace never weakens, just like the punchy writing of the dialogues.

All this in eight episodes of around twelve minutes. Little but strong ! Cork was one of our favorites at the last Séries Mania festival.

Bouchon can be seen in full now on the Arte website from April 29.