Of money and blood: a great series made in France (review)

After The Kings of Scam, the scandal linked to the carbon tax inspires Xavier Giannoli.

For its first foray into the serial universe, Xavier Giannoli seizes the carbon tax scam
and signs a gleaming thriller which explores the madness of voracious capitalism. Behind colorful characters, a moral and political thriller.

“It’s the intelligence of the street that fucks the intelligence of the big schools.” This sentence launched by one of the key characters in the documentary The Kings of Scam sums up the carbon tax scam well. At the beginning of the 2000s, three margoulins managed to hijack for their benefit the carbon quota market designed to force companies to pollute less, before rivalries over the money led to a bloodbath. Directed by Guillaume Nicloux, halfway
between The Freedmen and an episode of Stripteasethis documentary explored the issue and featured literally mind-blowing characters.

Two years later, and six years after Olivier Marchal who, with Carbon, had transformed this story into a thug film, Xavier Giannoli in turn took up the subject. Far from Nicloux’s funny doc, the filmmaker imagines a real thriller, a dizzying dive into the mysteries of this fascinating scheme. This is made clear from the start: the names of the protagonists have been changed, some characters have even been completely invented. There will be no question of matching the delirious slaughter of Marco Mouly or the soft charisma of Arnaud Mimran. Reality is too strong. So, Giannoli and co-writer Jean-Baptiste Delafon will adopt not the point of view of the gangsters, but that of the cop Simon Weynachter (Vincent Lindon) who follows in the footsteps of the infernal trio, from Tel Aviv to the 20th arrondissement. The plot is interspersed with his testimony, in front of the camera, delivered as part of a judicial investigation to two stiff and impassive civil servants.

STYLIST. The entire scope of this mini-series lies in this fusion between ultra-documentary realism and operatic lyricism. Giannolli has Mann in his sights, and for once in a French fiction, it’s not ridiculous. It tells the story of a team of high-tech thugs who are afraid of nothing, even when they know there is a cop in town (Lindon in his Pacino register) who doesn’t sleep at night, watch through the window the metallic lights of the city, and will not rest until breaking his adversaries. Giannoli films all this in the style of
great American stylists: he records like a ceremonial the immersion of states of mind in their wildly materialistic environment; it alternates moments of stasis (the brilliant opening of episode 3 in the synagogue) with bursts of vulgar madness. There is Mann, but we also think of Soderbergh and English for this science of editing. However, we first find the filmmaker of Lost illusions. There is not that far between the human comedy and the heist of the century. Jérôme Attias (Niels Schneider’s character) or Alain Fitoussi (Ramzy, insane from his first appearance in the frame) will definitely get lost in the infernal merry-go-round of their scam.

All the characters play social comedy. They cross all the layers of a globalized society, try their luck, succeed or (be) lost depending on the circumstances and a destiny that they think they can control in an absolutely chaotic world. That’s what the series is really about: the seething chaos of the world and one poor cop’s attempts to fix it.

WHITE KNIGHT. Weynachter, a little in the background at the beginning, becomes the center of the show over the episodes. He tries less to stop
the thugs to decipher their scheme, to understand it and to restore meaning in a world which is on the verge of being uncreated and which needs to be given shape again (the numerous shots of Lindon in front of his whiteboard, literally cabalistic). There
law, Judaism, mathematical rigor: this (a little too) white knight is the true point of view of the filmmaker who observes through him a capitalism gone mad, without limits and which devours the world. At the end of the sixth episode, we believe we have a great series made in France.

The Kings of Scam: when reality exceeds fiction (review)