Pierre Schoeller’s adaptation of Edouard Philippe’s 2011 novel, “In The Shadows,” takes us inside the dark, seedy, and high-octane world of power corridors. It sets up the backroom to the forging and unraveling of political nexuses amidst thrillingly unpredictable circumstances. As high tempers and stakes are, the tension ratchets up by several notches in the heat and fervor of the electoral campaign season. This has all the elements of a tense drama; thankfully, the taut screenplay credited to four writers is matched in spirit and vigor by Schoeller and Guillaume Senez’s finely calibrated direction.
In a furiously frantic opening sequence that establishes the tone of the series, Cesar Casalonga (Swann Arlaud) primes himself as our guide through a narrative of dubiousness, deception, and scandal in a fractious political landscape as he introduces two candidates vying in a primary election to lead the Republican right-wing party. Marie-France Tremeau (a steely Karin Viard) is hotly tipped to win but receives a major shock when the ex-justice minister, Paul Francoeur (Melvil Poupaud), beats her to it.
Besides being the chief political advisor to Paul, Cesar is one of his oldest friends to whom Paul had first confided about his presidential aspirations and, more importantly, his vision for France. Yet, as it is revealed in a telling exchange, the two, despite their apparent intimacy, intensely guard their secrets from each other. Beyond basic broad strokes of information, neither is that really clued into what the other has done or been up to. Cesar is the one who has carefully built Paul’s political career, offering critical insights and shaping key decisions from the sidelines.
Though Paul achieves victory, he has it only through a narrow margin. The party he is supposed to lead is, therefore, divided. Marie, who was almost certain of her triumph, is left bitter and she refuses to pass the slightest chance of upstaging Paul and foisting her agendas on him. He, however, is fully determined not to give her the least bit of foothold in the party’s proceedings. He is stubborn and single-minded regarding which policies and initiatives he wishes to push in his presidential campaign. Even if the timing of it misfires, he is adamant, ready to incur a hit to popularity. When a spate of police suicides gets media attention, he doesn’t budge from his stance and speaks out in a way that will earn him a mass appeal but stays on track the way he had plotted.
The first two episodes that premiered at the festival mostly serve an expository function, slowly carving out a dicey world that the viewer will navigate over the course of the remaining four episodes. Solid mystery is planted that’d be gradually unpeeled and provide the necessary thrust for suspensefully accrued dramatic revelations. There’s manipulation, a chain of lies, and seething distrust as power hides in the wings and prepares itself to orchestrate its next definitive move.
This world we are hurled into thrives on nasty power games mostly orchestrated by men but which have been internalized by women as well in order to survive within it. They’ve learned to play by its rules. However, when someone like Marie chooses to be ambitious, controlling, and unbending, she is labeled a snake. Crucially, the series, even within the span of its first two episodes, makes us privy to these mechanisms of one-upmanship and its skewed application across the genders.
“In The Shadows” shows great potential in its central relationship between a political candidate and his top aide. The writing flares with intelligence and flashes of sharply observed characterization, some sprouting from a scrap of dialogue. When Cesar concedes he has thousands of conflicting interests but lives like a monk, it is sufficient to provide us with a fair idea of the man, whose private life is as austere and contained as his public dealings are many and mind-bogglingly intricate.
Arlaud is excellent as a man who quietly works through a maze of lies but cannot let its smallest trace show to the unseasoned eye. Together with Poupaud, the two make a razor-sharp duo whose savviness and smarts might be enough to keep a viewer glued to the series as it gets messier and thornier.
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