Lea
Morel (Camille Razat) goes out on her 18th Birthday to La City with her
friends, and in the course of the night goes missing. Even in the opening
episode, her Uncle, Jean Morel (Laurent Bateau), looks dodgy when he slips her
50 euros as a birthday present, and the tension is cranked up as the clock
ticks and she doesn’t return home.
Her Mother, Florence (Alex Poisson) is angry at
her son , Thomas, who should have been keeping an eye on Lea. Florence
withdraws into herself and seeks help from wine, pills and psychics to maintain
her belief that Lea is still alive. In contrast, Lea’s father, Julien
(Pierre-Francois Martin-Laval) takes a pro-active approach to finding Lea. In
the process he makes a nuisance of himself by listening-in to police messages
and turning up whenever they find a new clue or potential suspect.
Inspector Bertrand Molina (Francois-Xavier
Demaison), has newly arrived in Lyon from Paris and has to cope with his
teenage daughter Rose (Mary Luneau) as well as the shoals of red herrings that
emerge during his investigation.
Nearly everyone is suspect, from the Father whose
testimony about the events on the night of her disappearance is quickly found
to be untrue, to her motor racing boyfriend, rich-boy Romain, then there is
Nicolas, a worker at the Morel’s restaurant who seems to have been besotted by
her, and Mathia Tellier, Lea’s tutor at college, and then there is a weirdo who
turns up and confesses he has murdered her. Perhaps all these male suspects are
all a slight-of-hand to stop us considering any women being responsible for her
disappearance? The hand-wringing of the Mother might be because she did it? Lea
herself is found to have a secret life that seems to have involved drug dealers
and prostitutes, did they have something to do with her disappearance?
The whirling complexities of the story are
compensated by the beautiful, sun-drenched setting of Lyon, a far better
locality to disappear than all those grey, miserable places so beloved of the
Nordic Noirs! Francois-Xavier as Inspector Molina is suitably sour-faced
throughout the series, which reflects the general state of his life, whilst
Alex Poisson and Pierre-Francois Martin-Lava as Lea’s parents brilliantly
convey the multi-faceted emotions and torture that tears through their lives.
With so many characters, all of whom have
something to hide, and the head-spinning twists in the plot, you end up
thinking they should all be interrogated and locked up to preserve the peace of
Lyon and might even cheer-up Inspector Molina.
The disappearance is as addictive and enigmatic
as the first series of Broadchurch, so be prepared to watch all 8 episodes in
one sitting.
THE DISAPPEARANCE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: CHARLOTTE BRANDSTROM /
SCREENPLAY: MARIE DESHAIRES, CATHERINE TOUZET / STARRING: CAMILLE RAZAT, ALEX POISSON, PIERRE-FRANCOIS
MARTIN-LAVAL, FRANCOIS-XAVIER DEMAISON / RELEASE
DATE: OUT NOW
