This French thriller about a teenage girl who turns up with no memory is a nicely paced, emotionally intense mystery – that spills over into the realms of fantasy
T
he greatest mystery in any French mystery drama is how the characters look so much better than any English person has ever looked. How did the cast of The Returned (more than 10 years ago now, though it feels like yesterday) look so gorgeous all the time, despite seemingly ordinary costumes, hair and makeup? Is Gallic bone structure really that different? Do clothes just hang better on the other side of la Manche? Is that why they call it “the sleeve”? Is it a clue?
Forgive me. I am consumed by this puzzle. The success of a French drama can be measured by how successfully the official narrative mystery distracts me from the conundrum, and here the new six-part series Promethea does just fine.
We begin with married couple the Lassets – Caroline (Marie-Josée Croze), a headteacher, and Charles (Thomas Jouannet), a doctor – hitting something that dashes out of the woods as they are driving home on a dark, rainy night. It turns out to be a teenage girl (played by Fantine Harduin) with neither a stitch of clothing nor a scratch on her. She remembers nothing about where she comes from or who she is, except for her name, Prométhée. They take her to hospital where she is examined by doctors and questioned by the police and, later by Charles’s colleague, psychoanalyst Marie (Odile Vuillemin). No concerned parents have reported her missing and the only clue to her identity is a tattoo on her wrist of a jellyfish.
