In French, the series is called To Marianne de Leonard. The title in English is more romantic, musical, like the captivating words of Leonard Cohen: So Long, Marianne.
Landing on Crave starting this Friday, September 27, this ambitious Canada – Norway – Greece co-production tells the story of the Montreal singer who became a legend, but above all the intertwining of his destiny with that of his Marianne Ihlen, that of the song, Yes. This love, as crazy as it is pure, a little unhealthy, we quickly understand half-heartedly, and fickle. Leonard and Marianne loved each other, then left, started families elsewhere, then loved each other again, all their lives, until their deaths, which occurred a few months apart in 2016 (July for her, November for him ).
Already, the beginnings of their history are complicated. When the young and – very! – tormented Leonard Cohen (played by a very similar Alex Wolff, seen notably in Oppenheimer And Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle), sees the beautiful Marianne (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) for the first time in her lodging on the island of Hydra, in Greece, the exchange of a few words is courteous, nothing more. The crush will develop longer, later, little by little. In the first two hours of So Long, Marianne, the young lady, struggles with an unfaithful spouse with violent tendencies, the arrogant Axel (Jonas Strand Gravli), a controversial emerging young writer, who cannot even help turning as the nurses pass by when his partner has just given birth. Who, moreover, never stops reproaching his sweetheart for her lack of ambition. Marianne will still become pregnant by this detestable character. The storm will only get worse.
In Hydra, where Leonard Cohen takes refuge to calm – without success – his anxieties, painters and authors are happily frolicking. An older woman, Charmian (Anna Torv) will take him under her wing in every sense of the word, with the knowledge of her husband, George Johnston (Noah Taylor).
You have to be a bit of a visionary, in the first two episodes of So Long, Marianne, to anticipate the grandiose career that the hero of the story will experience, then eternal nomad because happy nowhere, yet reinforced in his convictions of duty to create by a professor, Irving Layton (Peter Stormare). He quickly detects that the poetry of his protégé will have the power to heal the abysses of the human soul (“There Is a Crack in Everything, That’s How The Light Gets In»… does that remind you of something?) His Marianne will instill a certain amount of self-confidence in him. Most of the series will focus on the 1960s; we are therefore not entitled here to a biopic total and complete on Cohen’s entire existence, but especially on the foundations of his great love with Marianne… and all the excesses that come with it.
Leonard Cohen may well have been born in Montreal, in Westmount, and although part of the filming was camped here (as well as in Hydra, Athens and Oslo, in certain places actually frequented by the icon), So Long, Marianne doesn’t really smell like La Belle Province. We will travel there, on screen, from Montreal to Europe, via New York. What’s more, its languorous, suave, almost pompous rhythm, as if we had wanted the entire eight episodes to breathe the same vaporous demeanor as its main protagonist, will perhaps exasperate the most impatient.
That said, the plot of the evolution of the relationship between Leonard and Marianne is intriguing, and the entire visual aspect of So Long, Marianne is splendid: the landscapes of Greece and Norway are enough to make you dream at the end of September rainy!
Bell Media is very proud of this expensive project, already guaranteed to shine abroad (because it is sold in the United Kingdom, Germany, Greece, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Cyprus), whose budget rises above the average prize pools of usual Quebec fiction, but below English Canadian productions. Like Quebecor with The night Laurier Gaudreault woke up (Club illico, 2022), Bell Media is banking on this new offering to reach a wider audience, and does not hide its intention to develop other partnerships with other countries. The collaboration is apparently very fluid with Scandinavia for content issues, said Sophie Parizeau, general director of Fiction at Bell Media.
Marianne Ihlen being a native of Norway, the version broadcast there, and especially its first episode, will be different from those here, and more focused on the latter. Moreover, it was largely the Ihlen family who provided the necessary archives (such as correspondence between lovers) to the authors Øystein Karlsen and Jo Nesbø, who of course had to reinterpret certain facts for the needs of the story.
Everything was filmed in English. On Crave, three versions of So Long, Marianne will be available: in English with or without subtitles, and dubbed in French (with the voices of Alexandre Bacon and Rachel Graton in the title roles).
The Quebec actors Macha Grenon (Masha Cohen, Leonard’s mother, widowed young, who recognizes her boy’s artistic fiber, but pushes him to go work in his uncle’s factory to ensure stability), Éric Bruneau ( Robert Hershorn, a friend of Cohen), Kim Lévesque-Lizotte (a woman inspired by Monique Mercure, who had crossed paths with the couple in Montreal), Robin Lhoumeau (a dealer) and Patrick Watson (in the role of a singer, who also polished the music for the show) appear in supporting roles and lent their own voices for the French overprint.
The first two episodes of Leonard’s So Long, Marianne will be available on Crave this Friday, September 27.
The next six will be deposited there at the rate of one per week.
