Do you miss the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics yet? The Marie Antoinettes clutching their warbling heads, the drenched athletes and flaming piano floating down the Seine, the … Minions? They were the pinnacle of French fromage-ité, but if you’re ready for something saner, you might consider a couple of mini-series fit for the languors of late summer.
The Chalet (2018) is not to be confused with the Oscar-winning Anatomy of a Fall, which also involves a deadly chalet. A group of attractive couples are gathering at a chalet in a tiny town in the French Alps—this was filmed in Chamonix—to celebrate the upcoming marriage of their friends Tiphaine and Laurent. As their convoy of cars approaches the town on an ancient bridge, part of it crumbles behind them, cutting them off from civilization.
The group is so grateful to have cheated death that they don’t fully understand the gravity of their isolated situation until they’ve settled in at the chalet. They quickly lose cell-phone service, and when some of the men venture out to get help, they don’t return. Soon it becomes clear that they are being picked off, one by one. (Drops of God fans might recognize one of its stars, Fleur Geffrier, as a member of the wedding party.)
The ever diminishing group has no idea what the killer’s motive might be, and they are sort of frightened, but in that compartmentalized French way where they still can appreciate a delicious meal. With a single exception, no one seems to be grief-stricken either, which adds to the series’ intriguing, slightly off-key tone.
This 2017 narrative runs parallel to the origin story from 20 years earlier, in which a Parisian couple with two young children rents the same chalet so the husband can work on his novel. Their presence doesn’t sit well with the insular villagers, and, without explanation, the family disappears.
There’s much to keep you off-balance in Le Chalet, beginning with the eerie tune sung by a little girl that runs over the opening credits as blood trickles through a mock-up of the village. There’s also a present-day psychiatric interrogation of one of the characters, who may be in prison, which serves as a kind of meta-commentary. And then there’s the incongruous beauty of an idyllic place that becomes a killing ground, impossible to ignore even as the number of survivors shrinks.
Some may find it challenging to keep track of who’s who in the large cast from 2017—there are six couples and six villagers—so don’t go too long between viewings. Many contemporary thrillers sacrifice the suspense that comes with the question of who did it to the matter of why, but The Chalet handles both with Gallic élan.
I’m not sure I care who did it in All This I Will Give to You, but its broad-strokes portrayal of an aristocratic French wine dynasty coming apart at the seams yields some priceless campy moments and several opportunities to yell at the screen.
There’s much to keep you off-balance in Le Chalet, beginning with the eerie tune sung by a little girl that runs over the opening credits as blood trickles through a mock-up of the village.
Adapted from the Spanish best-seller by Dolores Redondo and relocated to the South of France, this series leans into the grounding presence of its hero, Manuel Ortigosa (a soulful David Kammenos). A successful Parisian novelist, Manuel is stunned to learn that he has inherited the Provençal wine estate of his husband, Aymeric Fabre de Castelmore, after his death in what appears to be a car accident. It seems Aymeric led a double life, keeping Manuel in the dark as to his aristocratic origins and business dealings.
Manuel has his hands full dealing with the absurdly snobbish, loony family, who are appalled to learn Aymeric had a husband and want to fight the will, believing the druggy youngest brother should inherit the estate instead.
Richard Saugier (Bruno Solo), a police detective on the cusp of retirement, thinks Aymeric was murdered and asks Manuel to help him investigate. The terrier-like cop and the gay novelist make an uneasy pair as they uncover the family’s many secrets.
Adapted from the Spanish best-seller by Dolores Redondo and relocated to the South of France, All This I Will Give to You leans into the grounding presence of its hero.
As might be expected, the plot takes some baroque turns as we get deeper into the twisted family’s history—this show shares a tiny bit of DNA with Dynasty and Falcon Crest—but Kammenos and Solo give it a sturdy enough terroir to keep it from going off.
If you take away the cocaine and vineyards and sub in opioids and cornfields, the problems in Provence aren’t that different from those in the Iowa City of Mindy Mejia’s A World of Hurt. Pain is part of being human; it keeps us alive by letting us know something’s wrong with our bodies, which is the conundrum Kara Johnson faces every day. Mejia introduced Kara in her previous book, To Catch a Storm, where she figured in as a precocious money-launderer for a homespun drug lord.
What sets her apart is her inability to feel physical pain; she has a rare syndrome called C.I.P. (congenital insensitivity to pain) and can’t feel the heat of a stovetop or the agony of a broken bone. Ever since her girlfriend, wanting something better for Kara, tipped off the D.E.A. about her boss’s cartel and paid for it with her life, Kara has been suffering. With her future a blank, she agrees to work as an informant on a task force trying to track down what’s left of his empire.
Her police minder is Max Summerlin, the decent cop who helped bring down the cartel at some physical cost. They’re a spiky duo, Kara doing her best to self-destruct while trawling for intel among the lowlife and Max trying to figure out what exactly the task force is looking for while trying to ignore his damaged shoulder.
Mejia sets this book during peak pandemic time, a reminder that it’s not just Kara and Max who are in pain, but the entire world. She writes alternating chapters in Max’s and Kara’s voices, which is tricky because Kara is so broken and hard-edged. But she’s also darkly witty and genuine enough in her grief that we warm to her.
What makes Mejia so good is that besides being an ace writer of violent action sequences and original plotlines, she’s also a complex thinker. Her books are unusually well developed in terms of character—you know she’s created a whole backstory for even the minor ones—and her interest in science, whether it’s the physics in To Catch a Storm or the more medical and zoological kind in this book, is contagious and adds memorable breadth to her work.
The Chalet is available for streaming on Netflix. All This I Will Give to You is available for streaming on Apple TV+ and MHz Choice
Lisa Henricksson reviews mysteries at AIR MAIL. She lives in New York City
