Cars explode. Shootings and murders are increasing. Men are beaten mercilessly. Innocent people add to the already long list of victims. The biker war is raging. In these years of financial austerity following the referendum failure of 1995, is Quebec society falling apart? Everyone, in any case, fears bikers and the criminal groups affiliated with them. The reign of night has taken hold, in the midst of a climate of terror. Here is the backstory on which is woven The callthis new detective series broadcast starting this week by Illico+.
Two prison guards, Pierre Rondeau and Diane Lavigne, are shot dead by people who increasingly want to believe themselves untouchable. Where will boss Maurice “Mom” Boucher stop? Within the Carcajou police squad, prosecutor France Charbonneau, played by Magalie Lépine-Blondeau, will play a decisive role in turning the tide. The series is built around this lawyer who became a judge. It is she in large part, everyone remembers, who will end up having the criminal convicted after a second trial.
The real judge Charbonneau
Very verbose in interviews, the real France Charbonneau is full of praise for this series, which in a way praises history. “The series is absolutely fabulous! I am honored and moved. It’s a copy and paste of reality, in the form of a thriller. […] I can assure you that all that is said are extracts from the trials, from what was really said. […] It’s strikingly realistic. »
She says she recognizes just as well what she experienced in offices, particularly in terms of her relationships with investigators.
France Charbonneau was, between 1997 and 2000, legal advisor to the Carcajou squad. Having become a judge, she was also known to the public as president of the commission of inquiry into the Quebec construction industry.
Why did she think this story needed to be told? In his opinion, it is important for a society to exorcise its demons. “We must overcome fear in all its forms. It is important to show that the jury was able to overcome their fears. »
The famous judge recalls that, in front of Maurice “Mom” Boucher’s henchmen, everyone trembled. The mere fact that members of his gang went to appear before a witness after his appearance was enough for him to no longer wish to appear before the court. “Fear can creep in everywhere,” says France Charbonneau.
More than real facts
With this series, we are more than just a detective series “inspired by true events”, as is often the case. Written by Luc Dionne (Silence, District 31, Monica the machine gun), The call is based on fine work of dissection of period documents, with a clear desire to present a coherent sequence of events.
The call does not reinvent the detective genre. Far from it. As in all series of the genre, anxiety-provoking music keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. It also distills a morality on the foundations of a just society, but without ever discussing what leads individuals to criminality. The basic logic is that the guilty must pay. “We won’t let him pass. He will pay for what he did,” says the police officer played by Patrice Robitaille.
The first episode appears difficult to follow as the transposition of the original story unfolds on a thread punctuated with repeated notices to viewers on the date and time of the elements presented to them. Where are we going with all this? The minutes pass. Little by little, the landscape lights up. It must be said that the series is served by a range of exceptional actors.
-A remarkable cast
Magalie Lépine-Blondeau plays a convincing France Charbonneau. Her talent as an actress cannot be denied. “I recorded his voice… I peeled his voice to make it my own,” she said on the sidelines of the press viewing of the first episodes of the series.
The actress would have had a good time proposing a substitute Charbonneau prosecutor, somewhere between caricature and imitation. But that would have been a betrayal of his own understanding of the game in front of the camera.
Magalie Lépine-Blondeau was able, on the one hand, to identify the poise and flow of the prosecutor, while on the other hand giving a lot of herself to the character in order to ensure a higher degree of veracity. This was not something necessarily obvious to achieve in the middle of a distribution where men reign in force, as in the real story. “The fact of being in front of men, all physically much bigger, is important. In my body, explains Magalie Lépine-Blondeau, something was happening so that I could be on the same level as them. »
The young hitman Stéphane “Godasse” Gagné is played, in his complexity and his inner torments, by a convincing Pier-Luc Funk. Everything is collapsing around him. He slides towards the abyss into which he himself has launched himself. A phone call to her mother nevertheless reveals a social truth that is undoubtedly unsurpassable: “I love you the same, tsé,” she says.
For his part, Patrice Robitaille slips into the shoes of investigator Sylvain Provencher. And in the first two episodes at least, he may be the one who steals the show. In an interrogation session for example, his ability to modulate a roller coaster-like progression proves to be quite exciting.
As for him, Vincent Graton sends shivers down the spine. His incarnation of the uninhibited gang leader Maurice “Mom” Boucher is disturbing. Those who follow the series will also appreciate the performance of several other exceptional actors, including Christian Bégin, Pierre-François Legendre and James Hyndman. This distribution could not be more solid.
The fact remains that we remain here in a television of police culture. With cooking shows, the world of police affairs has for decades constituted a business whose limits constitute a sort of precinct, where spectators have learned to go in circles without asking too many questions. The call is to be placed in this line of overproduction in terms of detective series.
This series is directed by Julie Perreault. It is produced by the veteran television duo formed by Michel Trudeau and Fabienne Larouche. For the latter, The call presents “an important moment in our history”.
