There are series like films. They tell stories, sometimes fiction, sometimes reality. It sometimes happens that the two intertwine and that the spectator, no longer knowing where he is in front of his screen, becomes dizzy. Let’s call this “the Benzek effect”, for Benzekri, first name Éric, the screenwriter of Fever, the new creation from Canal + available since March 18. We left him showrunner of Black Baron, a political series of rare accuracy on the theater of politics, its decomposition and the rise to power of populists; here he is, the storyteller of the factory of opinion.
A fierce autopsy of our times in six episodes, the series plunges us into a societal tornado born from a headbutt inflicted by Fodé Thiam, a French football prodigy played by Alassane Diong, on his coach. A gesture, and an insult: “sale toubab” (“dirty white”, in Wolof). The media machine is set in motion, social networks are on fire, public opinion is torn apart, face to face, camp against camp. Politics has no control over anything. The beginnings of a civil war. However, it was only football, some would say, but what still makes a nation if not football?
The heroine plays Cassandra
In this “French battle” of identity tensions, where far-right thugs, soft-hearted liberals and absolutist indigenists enter the dance, two women, ex-friends, brilliant communicators, confront each other from a distance. Very to the right of the ring, Marie Kinsky (Ana Girardot), chimera of a Dieudonné and an Eric Zemmour, influencer, queen of stand-up, who fuels the protest, and delights in it. Facing her, Sam Berger (Nina Meurisse), a French Jewish woman who dreams of repairing France, sure of understanding it with her opinion studies, but is already struggling to repair her own life. Two alchemists inspired by Jacques Pilhan, a man in the shadow of François Mitterrand, a fine analyst of the public opinion movements of the time with his “quali”, these studies supposed to probe the political soul of public opinion. “The wizard of the Élysée”, as the journalist François Bazin called him in a book of the same name.
With Black Baron, it was also about recognizing the politicians who had crossed paths with Benzekri when he was a political advisor, those who had inspired his characters. Who is hiding behind those of Fever ? A little of all of us, journalists, citizens, activists, and a lot of himself in Sam Berger, the heroine who plays Cassandra with her dramatic prophecies and exaggerations that make the audience smile before slapping him, like the spectator.
Can a news item really pave the way to civil war in France? At a time when public debate is nothing more than spectacle, a question torments the mind when faced with La Fever: what if this series was only a mirror of our times? What is civil war about? To write his series, Éric Benzekri reread The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig. In his book testament, the author wondered about this Europe which, although it enjoyed progress, audacity, freedom, from Vienna to Paris, peacefully abandoned itself to horror. Looking at Fever, Zweig’s world of yesterday resonates with Benzekri’s world of today. Dizziness in front of the screen.
*”La Fièvre”, broadcast on Canal + since March 18 and on MyCanal.fr
.