The latest offering from our friends at Walter Presents comes from France and is a spooky supernatural thriller.
If you want to avoid all spoilers, stop reading this article now.
Caroline (a teacher) and Charles Lasset (a doctor) are driving home in a thunderstorm, their marriage decidedly on the rocks following the loss of a child, when they appear to hit a naked young girl on a country road. I say “appear” because, remarkably, she’s completely unhurt physically, but has no memory whatsoever – except for her name, Promethea.
The vape smoking Captain Elise Kirvin is brought in to ensure that Promethea really has lost her memory and isn’t just faking it. But it soon becomes very apparent that not only is her memory loss genuine, but there’s a lot more going on in her brain that isn’t easily explained.
Promethea is given a notebook and starts to draw sketches – images of buildings and walls. But she’s reluctant to share her memories and keeps the drawings hidden. When she overhears that she will be moved away from the hospital to a children’s home near Bordeaux, against the better judgement of the psychiatrist who gave her the book, she decides to sneak out of the hospital with her drawings in the hope of understanding the relevance of the images she’s creating.
Whilst she’s wandering the streets (quite how she got there and knew where to search isn’t really explained), trying to make sense of the images that have surfaced from her imagination, she starts to see a vision of a young woman dressed in a red raincoat. She follows the vision and finds herself in the home of Paul and Christine Vasseur – a couple whose daughter, Léa, went missing a few months previously. Is it Léa’s ghost she’s following?
If you enjoy your crime thrillers with a spooky “Sixth Sense” touch, this could be for you. Fantine Harduin does an excellent job as the mysterious title-character. She walks around wide-eyed and looking slightly bewildered, but she is totally believable as the frightened young woman who cannot explain who she is or why she has this ability to see things that others can’t.
It’s a bit of a slow burner – it’s not at all fast-paced – but the characters are well-observed and the acting performances exemplary. This series was co-produced by the French national broadcaster, TF1, so there’s some quality behind it, too.
France has a long and impressive history of producing excellent crime drama, and this would appear to be another addition to that distinguished list. Definitely one to check out.
Walter Presents: ‘Promethea' is available as a full boxset on C4 Streaming now.
