Villefranche – A Visitor’s Guide
BLACK SPOT – a series created by Mathieu Missoffe ⁓
Chief of Police Laurène Weiss (Suliane Brahim) and her deputy Louis Hermann (Renault Rutten)
In northeastern France, surrounded by dense and ancient French forest, lies the fictional village of Villefranche, a place where cellphone reception is terrible, and GPS is unreliable. Iron ore deposits in the surrounding hills are blamed for the interference, and the single remaining public phone booth is aggressively defended by the locals. Villefranche is an unassuming little town, built around a sawmill that is going out of business. It is a great place to hide.
Franck Siriani (Laurent Capelluto), a prosecutor who has fallen out of favour with his superiors, arrives in town hoping to put his career back on track by figuring out why Villefranche has a murder rate six times the national average. In 2021, the homicide rate in France was 1.14 per 100,000. It will develop that the murder rate in Villefranche is greater by a much larger factor than six.
Sabine and the license plate
The only pub in town is the Eldorado. It is owned by Sabine (Brigitte Sy), and has a 1960s Washington State license plate on the wall behind the bar. BLACK SPOT was filmed in Vosges, France, which is on roughly the same latitude as Seattle.
Prosecutor Siriani is allergic to nearly everything, and on arrival nearly dies after being stung by a bee. He is reluctantly assisted in his investigations by local Police Chief Laurène Weiss (Suliane Brahim), who, years ago, vanished into the woods that surround the town, emerging days later with complete amnesia about the incident and missing two fingers. Her deputy, Adjutant Ferrandis (Hubert Delattre), is nicknamed Teddy Bear. Ferrandis is the only gay character and the only character with a nickname.
Adjutant Ferrandis aka Nousnour
Laurène is romantically entangled with the town’s Mayor, Bertrand Steiner (Samuel Jouy). The Mayor is married and his family owns the sawmill that he plans to close, an action that will cost many townspeople their jobs. Mayor Steiner’s daughter Marion (Sarah-Megan Allouch) mysteriously vanished. The date of Marion’s disappearance, December 4th, is also the date (in 1872) when the merchant brigantine Mary Celeste was discovered abandoned and adrift. Marion was best friends with Cora (Camille Aguilar), Laurène’s daughter. Cora is an environmental activist.
It was Bertrand Steiner who, twenty years previously, found Laurène wounded in the woods and carried her to hospital.
Deputy-in-training Camille Laugier (Tiphaine Daviot)
Mystic forces might be at work in the hills and swamps. On more than one occasion, a grey wolf appears to Laurène in the woods, and leads her to important clues. Two crows (or possibly ravens) habitually perch outside the police station. Another pair casually perch on the arms of a scarecrow (with good reason, it turns out) in a nearby field. Late in the first season, a murder of crows comes to the aid of one of the major characters.
In Celtic myth, carrion-eating blackbirds were seen as a bridge between the living and the dead, able to communicate with both. A painting of Cernunnos, the horned god of Celtic mythology, hangs on the wall of the local library.
Leïla Barami (Naidra Ayadi) is the town doctor and Coroner. She is central to three of the most memorable scenes in the series. — Ayadi is also Samira in Sébastien Marnier’s award-winning thriller THE ORIGIN OF EVIL (L’origine du mal)
An underground environmentalist group is hiding in the area, and is investigating the Steiner family’s business activities. The leader of the group plants a camera in Cora’s bedroom, and it works well, so local wireless networks do not seem to be impacted by whatever is affecting cell phone signals.
Villefranche has no church. In the 15th century C.E., they tried to build one, but the stones were sent by boat, but the ship sank. In the 1st century B.C.E., Roman soldiers were sent to the area to build a road. All of them disappeared. The leader of the clandestine environmentalists is Roman Barthélémy (Théo Costa-Marini), and the town is not far away from a quarry.
Miscellaneous Info
Franck Siriani (Laurent Capelluto)
Laurent Capelluto (Franck Siriani) is also Mathieu Douek in ;INTO THE NIGHT, a 12-episode TV series inspired by Jacek Dukaj‘s 2015 science fiction novel “The Old Axolotl“, in which an overnight flight from Brussels must remain airborne to stay ahead of the rising sun after a disastrous solar flare.
Samuel Jouy (Mayor Steiner) is Swanney in Ludovic Colbeau-Justin’s buddy comedy LE LION, which stars Philippe Katerine as Romaine, a psychologist whose patient, Leo Milan, claims to be an international spy (code-named The Lion). Leo predicts the kidnapping of Romain’s fiancée, and when she is actually abducted, Romain realizes only Leo has the skills to save her. LE LION is available on DVD.
Hubert Delattre (Nounours) is Eric Bolso in GET IN. a film by Olivier Abbou based on real-life events. A couple rent their house for the summer and then go on holiday. When they return, they find that the locks have been changed and the tenants now claim the house as their own.