In the “Hippocrates” series, this is not (just) a fire extinguisher

ONE SERIES, ONE OBJECT — In season 3 of Thomas Lilti’s series, an ordinary fire extinguisher is used to hold a defective door. But the object diverted from its function here becomes quite a symbol. That of the great vulnerability of the hospital institution.

C‘is summer, at the Poincaré hospital. And the fire season and paid leave hardly spare the health establishment: due to a lack of sufficient staff to take care of the patients who continue to flood in, the night emergencies have closed their doors. Tempers get heated, but Chloé Antovska (Louise Bourgoin) keeps a cool head. And, defying the formal ban from her hierarchy and pulling out all the stops, she finds a way to illegally hospitalize patients whose health requires it in a clandestine dispensary that she has set up in a disused wing of the establishment. This means? A fire extinguisher diverted from its usual use. A simple fire extinguisher, like Hippocrates has furtively filmed dozens of them since its first episodes, blurry silhouettes in the background of corridors and guard rooms, so familiar that no one ever paid attention to them.

This time, the device occupies the foreground, and even a leading role. Its use by young doctors born under the pen and camera of Thomas Lilti, to alleviate an emergency situation, turns out to be quite far from that imagined by its inventor at the beginning of the 19th century (a certain George William Manby, we Wikipedia informs). In the hands of Chloé, Alyson, Arben or even Hugo, the device is not used to contain an outbreak of fire. But to keep open a heavy antediluvian door that no brake or wedge no longer seems to want to hold back.

Symbolically, it is the entire hospital institution that this makeshift equipment supports. Treat whatever it costs… But since the temporary is not intended to last, the precarious stratagem only works for a while. Arben (Karim Leklou) experiences this painfully during episode 4. All it takes is for the fire extinguisher to slip, and the door closes inexorably on the three patients and their only doctor, now entirely cut off from the world. The light from the bulbs flickers, time stops, a strange atmosphere sets in, reminiscent of Stranger Things and his upside down world. A disoriented, nightmarish world without fire extinguishers where, whatever the emergency, no one hears you scream…

s Hippocrates, season 3, on Canal+, Monday at 9:10 p.m.