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The film director and screenwriter Gérald Hustache Mathieu (Grenoble, France, 56 years old) wanted to film a television series when no one thought of something like that. It was the year 2010 and he believed that this was the appropriate format to tell the story of David Rosseau, a successful writer of detective novels who becomes an investigator to decipher what he considers to have been a murder camouflaged as a suicide and, in the process, regain inspiration. for another novel. “At the time, when he developed this story, the series market was not as mature in France as it is now. It was difficult to find financing and almost all the productions that were released were of low quality. I had to shoot in film form to ensure that we could meet certain standards,” the creator recalled to this newspaper in mid-January in Paris, during a meeting with the international press. The film in question, titled in France Poupoupidou, received positive reviews, but was the last one that Hustache Mathieu has filmed so far. In his return to the audiovisual world, the director has recovered the same story, with the same actors and, this time, with the narrative structure that he always wanted.. Polar Park It is the result in six episodes of that second chance. This content that has arrived in Spain through Sundance TV is available in full on demand in the AMC SELEKT service, an à la carte selection of the best content from several linear pay channels that can be contracted through Movistar Plus+.
“Now, television is capable of hosting that surreal and at the same time poetic universe that I wanted to give to this story and that was then only found in series like Twin Peaks”, comments the Frenchman. In addition to Lynch, the thriller by David Fincher Seven It also inspired that feature film at that time. And so did the darkly humorous tone of Fargo, by the Coen brothers, which in recent years has also become a series, with a recent (and notable) fifth season. “The Coens are great at constructing a very specific type of tragedy; one that is morbid and fun at the same time and that I have tried to emulate,” he says in the French capital during the presentation of this series.
In Polar Park, the main writer finds a very particular way to overcome the creative block that he has been suffering from for years. One day, he receives a mysterious message that makes him return to his hometown, Mouthe, considered the coldest place in all of France. There his brother Giacomo is waiting for him, who has important information about the author’s deceased mother. But, when he arrives, he finds a wave of deaths attributed to a serial killer with a vocation as an artist. So he decides to investigate what is happening. As happened in the cinema, Rousseau (played by Jean-Paul Rouve) begins to collaborate with the local police officer Louvetot (Guillaume Gouix). Together they develop an investigation through the creative mind of the serial killer that will take them through curious places in France and Switzerland. The characters and their emotions are placed in the foreground in this crime story, ahead of the mystery surrounding the hidden murderer. And humor gains ground over melancholy with respect to the original story.
The series is filled with cliffhangers, surprises that trigger the suspense from one chapter to the next and make the challenge of surprising the viewer more risky, says its creator. “I remember seeing Seven, which from the beginning built its entire plot so well and, when the end seemed to have arrived, left me with the feeling that it had been a scam and that I wanted my money back. And, suddenly, the half hour after that moment of anger was impressive. “Fincher stripped himself naked in a way as a filmmaker and went much further than expected,” confesses Hustache Mathieu, who wanted “without being arrogant” to reproduce a climactic moment of the same style in the middle bars of Polar Park, when there are still several episodes left. “It’s a way to give a twist to the main plot and not cling to the whodunit conventional,” he explains. “Alfred Hitchcock killed his protagonist in the first minutes of Psychosis and he gave us all a lesson in creating intrigue,” he recalls. “For the second season of the series I’m going to invite Brad Pitt to kill him as soon as it starts,” jokes the director.
Does the ‘Lupine effect’ exist?
The global success of French series like Lupin o Ten percent (Call My Agent!) thanks to its exposure on platforms streaming has boosted this industry as The Money Heist y Elite Have they done it with the Spanish one? “I think he’s not so much a Lupine effect What is happening is that traditional television channels have understood that series are an opportunity to create economic and creative benefit,” responds Gérald Hustache Mathieu. “And it also has to do with the fact that French filmmakers and authors have finally assumed that they can express themselves through this window with the same guarantees. Creators are like monks, people who have faith in an absolute; They are like knights who fight for the excellence of their writings,” he defends.
Precisely, one of the scenarios of Polar Park It is the monastery where Brother Giacomo lives, the frustrated confidant of that novel writer turned detective who is the protagonist of the series. Religion is a constant in the projects of Gérald Hustache Mathieu, who finds in it a way to drive the conflicts of his characters. To do so, he uses “that system of values based on religion, between sin and the temptation to transgress, which any spectator of a society like Spain, based on Christianity, can identify,” he points out. “Also because, as he said, the creative process of a writer of series, films, books and plays is solitary, like that of monks. To be this type of author, you need to believe in something you don’t see. In my case, my god is fiction. Or, rather, it is poetry. What I want is to transmit that need for blind faith to my characters as well,” he argues.