ON THE TV PROGRAM. This evening Arte is broadcasting the first episodes of Machine, an action series as offbeat as it is explosive…
Machine. It seems that the title of the new series broadcast by Arte, from Thursday April 11, at 8:55 p.m., was inspired by its creator, Fred Grivois, by advice from Emmanuel Macron to young people: “read Karl Marx”, quite simply ! With his desire to explain the class struggle and left-wing ideals to teenagers in general and to his children in particular, the director wanted to find “a fun way” to approach the subject. The result: an offbeat and explosive series, with Margot Bancilhon (seen notably in Please recently) and JoeyStarr in the main roles, who stands out in the current TV program and was rewarded at the last Séries Mania festival in Lille.
The pitch of Machine, it’s the story of a young marginal woman (Margot Bancilhon), a kung-fu specialist, who is actively sought by the army’s secret services for a dark reason. To hide, she returns to her hometown, where she hopes to take refuge with her grandmother incognito. She discovers that she died during her absence and will nevertheless stay in the deceased’s apartment and find work in a household appliance factory. This is where this solitary fighter will come face to face with the social struggle: recently bought by a Korean industrialist, the company finds itself in turmoil. There the young woman meets a loud-mouthed worker, JP (Joey Starr), a former drug addict and follower of Karl Marx, who gives her his nickname: “Machine”. Thanks to the revolt brewing in the factory, the new recruit reveals surprising combat skills…
Scarier than a horror movie
In addition to his anecdote on Emmanuel Macron’s quote, Fred Grivois said some great things about Machine at a press conference. He explains in particular that originally, he was looking to make a horror series, but that he realized, while watching the film by Stéphane Brizé The law of the market in particular, that “what scared the French was not mystical things, but rather that of losing one’s job”.
Far from Brizé’s ultra-realistic staging (one could also think of Ken Loach), here he digs into the hallucinatory repertoire of Tarantino, with a script and action scenes that come out of nowhere. Because Machine, with a dark look under her dreadlocks, is more of a Kill Bill or Millennium heroine, between Beatrix Kiddo and Lisbeth Salander, experienced in martial arts and the handling of weapons, who therefore has enough to make the bad guys drool.
What are the opinions on Machine, the Arte series?
The most convinced is Ouest-France, which estimates that Machine is precisely “the perfect combo between Karl Marx and Kill Bill”. “Fun, political and offbeat”, the series “imposes its astonishing mix from its first minutes”, writes the daily. “You certainly have to like offbeat humor, Kill Bill-style fights and the political speeches of Karl Marx to appreciate this crazy original novelty”, but this “French creation which goes at a hundred miles an hour, served by a fine casting” is ultimately a “daring mix of genres […]so wonderfully executed that we beg Arte to give a season 2 to this crazy gem.
The most severe is the New Obs, who judges for his part that “Machine goes pschitt.” “Despite the charisma of Margot Bancilhon and JoeyStarr, everything rings false in this bad trap”, writes the weekly, which adds that “the scenario like the dialogues are heavy, the action scenes laborious, the borrowings to the annoying pop culture (notably the figure of the mentor copied from Stick, the character created by Frank Miller), the poor direction and the unbelievable supporting roles”.