Conversations between friends on Canal+: the unspeakable in-between of feelings

It only took three novels that examine the search for meaning and feelings of young Irish people in the digital age for Sally Rooney to be dubbed the Jane Austen of the 21st century. His ironic pen and his ability to plunge into the inner chaos of his characters lend themselves to laudatory comparison and attempts at adaptation. In the spring of 2000, Normal People had softened the confinement of millions of Britons by chronicling on the BBC (and on Starzplay in France) Marianne and Connell’s “je t’aime moi non plus”. Sublime painting of the awakening to desire and the flashes of first love.

Read alsoThe sublime elective affinities of Normal People

Its producers have re-enlisted by attacking the first work of Sally Rooney, Conversations between friends, which begins this Thursday evening on Canal +. Steeper, distant and ascetic story of a friendly and amorous quadrilateral between teenage accomplices and a couple of artists. The whole remains however troubling and poignant thanks to the revelation of these twelve episodes Alison Oliver.

“Normal People told an incandescent love story. We just wanted the protagonists to end up together. Conversations between friends is a more complex, less pleasant portrait of four people stagnating in their lives. They cannot evolve unless they meet, shake up established relationships or even manipulate each other., notes the 25-year-old actress who plays Frances. A needy and self-effacing heroine, the opposite of a seductress and home wrecker. And yet.

repressed desire

Students at Trinity College in Dublin, Frances and Bobby, who dated in high school, declaim feminist poems on stage. Their performance catches the eye of thirtysomething essayist Melissa (Jemina Kirke of Girls). She invites the duo to her home. Bobby and Frances meet her comedian husband Nick (Joe Alwyn, Mr. Taylor Swift in town). The meeting causes elective affinities in cascade: Bobby (Sasha Lane) is not insensitive to the charm of Melissa. Frances succumbs to Nick’s tormented charisma. The couple of Nick and Melissa, who close their eyes on purpose, resist better than the friendship between Bobby and Frances, forced to confront their unspoken.

Normal People was a solar storm, Conversations between friends countdown on a hampered atmosphere. Like a turbulent underground water trapped in the rock. Misunderstandings, modesty, distance collide there. As minimalist and naturalistic as Rooney’s writing, director Lenny Abrahamson cherishes the routine of everyday life, the thoughts that glide over faces, the slow tasting of a cup of herbal tea, the slip of clothes on the skin. In his series does not resonate the frenzy and exaltation of fiction, but rather the hesitation, the confusion of feelings which paralyzes a good part of ordinary mortals.

emotional anarchy

“Conversation between friends points out the complexity, the difficulty, the potential for destruction, as well as consolation, at the heart of human relationships. The series is an apology for letting go where Frances is terribly in control and overanalysis. decrypts Alison Oliver, of which it is the first role. As in Normal People, Lenny Abrahamson used an intimacy coordinator for the sex scenes. Even the hugs rustle with this repressed desire, with these reserved natures. The written word, via incessant text messages and emails, is more complimentary than the spoken word. While Bobby and Melissa are extroverts who manage to express their feelings, Nick and Frances have reticent and silent natures.

A constant with Sally Rooney who introduces class relations between her characters. For Alison Oliver, there is something inherently universal in her compatriot’s writing: “She shows how, on the threshold of adulthood, friendships, family and love ties have a central place in affect. Everything is very intense, everything leaves a formative imprint”. And to continue: “Sally doesn’t cheat on being a young woman. She speaks with rare frankness of periods, of endometriosis. It illustrates fluidity, the absence of labels. People love whoever they want. Including several people at the same time”. This anarchy, this disorder are embodied in an epilogue that will cause a lot of ink to flow.