[CINÉMA] A devoted friend, the fiction adapted from La Mythomane du Bataclan

It is November 13, 2015. One hundred and thirty people are murdered in cold blood in Paris, including ninety at the Bataclan, during the Eagles of Death Metal concert.

Christelle was not there, but she is in shock, like all French people. Driven by a morbid curiosity, she begins to frequent the victims' Facebook groups, offers them psychological support and gradually becomes their confidante. Her legitimacy is obvious: she makes them believe that her friend Vincent was seriously injured during the concert and is currently in a coma in the hospital. When a victim support association was set up, Christelle spontaneously decided to take part and quickly established herself within the group as an essential member. However, suspicions arise among his new friends, struck by the inconsistencies in his story…

A symptomatic phenomenon of a sick society

Freely adapted from the investigation book The Mythomaniac of the Bataclanby Alexandre Kauffmann, published by Éditions Goutte d’or in 2021, A devoted friend is the first French fiction produced for Max, Warner Bros.' video-on-demand platform. Discovery.

Directed by Just Philippot, this series in four fifty-two minute episodes deals head-on with the subject of false victims of attacks, a new and, to say the least, worrying phenomenon, which seems to find its deep roots in the culture of narcissism, the rise of social networks, the ravages of contemporary solitude and the glorification of the – highly coveted – status of victim. “ Just on November 13explained Alexandre Kauffmann to Tele-Leisure, there were around thirty [de fausses victimes]including around twenty judicially recorded. »

The fictional association “Stand for Paris”, which is discussed in the series, is directly inspired by “Life for Paris”, whose leaders confided to Kauffmann the presence, within them, of six false victims, four of whom were put on trial. “ Among these sixsays the author, there is Florence [le cas abordé par son livre-enquête]who herself flushed out the association's first false victim, who claimed that her best friend had died at the Bataclan. She also had an electronic bracelet when she joined the association, because she had already been convicted of other old scams. »

A sinister portrait

Renamed Christelle, the main character, magnificently played by the jovial and energetic Laure Calamy, who carries the story on her shoulders, is a perfect textbook case. Single forty-year-old living with her mother, this poor girl in self-pity, pathetic and mythomaniac, searches for meaning in her existence and thinks she has found herself through a tragedy that she has not experienced… Used to confusing her world, chasing small advantages or meager profits, Christelle is not devoid of empathy, far from it. The character she composes, and in whom she would like to believe, is fundamentally imbued with the testimonies she has been able to collect; and somewhere, no doubt, she has the feeling of doing justice to the real victims. From there to feeling the right to take advantage of your position, there is only one step. After all, isn't she also, in her own way, a victim of society?

Served by an impeccable cast – Laure Calamy and Arieh Worthalter in the lead –, A devoted friend turns out to be a real plunge into the darkness of the soul, where lying to others is only equaled by lying to oneself and where, fortunately, a form of goodness is never completely excluded.

A little long, however, this four-episode series, which takes a while to start, could just as well have been the subject of a feature film of an hour and a half.

4 stars out of 5