2023-09-24 09:51:04
A mini-series of seven episodes to discover on Netflix, “Tapie” sees Laurent Lafitte slip into the skin of the sulphurous French businessman. Neither incriminating nor laudatory, the series demonstrates to what extent Bernard Tapie’s cheekiness, audacity and energy exert a powerful power of fascination.
It is the story of the rise and fall of a man without limits. Bernard Tapie, son of a heating engineer, got his start by winning a talent show then selling televisions before creating small businesses. And soon to buy much bigger ones, from Wonder to Adidas.
The man then becomes a TV presenter, football club boss, minister under Mitterrand, all punctuated by a few songs, bankruptcies, trials and rants that remain in the annals of French television.
This turbulent destiny is recounted chronologically from an above all intimate point of view in the series “Tapie”, co-written by the director Tristan Séguela (“16 years or almost”, “Rattrapage”, “A happy man”) and the writer and screenwriter Olivier Demangel (the “Baron noir” series, the films “Novembre” and “Tirailleur”).
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Childhood memories
The series often takes place at Bernard Tapie himself, with his wives, his parents, his children, his friends. This family, Tristan Séguela, son of the famous advertiser and great friend of the Tapie family Jacques Séguela, knew it personally.
“Among my parents’ friends, he was one of those who paid attention to me. He paid attention to everyone, big and small. Bernard Tapie sometimes spent part of his vacations with us and I was impressed by what he “he exuded physically when he was there and by what he represented in French society. I think that my desire to paint his portrait was born there and was nourished by these childhood memories”, indicates Tristan Séguela at the RTS.
Mirror of France
For co-writer Olivier Demangel, the series offers an excellent opportunity to tell the story of France in the second half of the 20th century. But it required an enormous amount of preliminary work: “We had to do a lot of work of documentation, reading and viewing to succeed in understanding and embracing everything that Bernard Tapie had done. He had an extraordinarily adventurous and romantic life. . It was necessary to identify the most interesting moments to tell to give an identity to this rather intimate portrait. It is a direction that we chose in the events of our life to give it a journey that corresponds to our vision,” he explains.
In fact, we are far from a moral portrait or biopic here. The two co-writers mainly wanted to show how Tapie was the pure product of the years he lived through, those of France from the 1970s to the 1990s. “It is not the story of a man who is going to make his fortune, it’s the story of a television salesman who wants to get into television. We focused the writing much more on his desire for recognition and to have a name”, continues Olivier Demangel.
Laurent Lafitte in the skin of Bernard Tapie, in the series “Tapie”. [Netflix]
No shame
For Tristan Séguela, Bernard Tapie “wanted to taste all the desserts, as we make one of the characters say. There was something childish in his desire to conquer”.
The series can be described as dramatic, since we know in advance the tragic fate of the main character. But it is also punctuated by very funny moments provoked in particular by the character, the escapades and the total absence of shame of Bernard Tapie. Burlesque humor, despite itself.
Comments collected by Anne Laure Gannac
Adaptation web: Melissa Härtel
“Tapie”, mini-series in seven episodes to discover on Netflix.
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