Early in the second episode of Lupin, Netflix’s latest European import and an early contender for best show of the year, there occurs a scene that captures the series in all of its fizzy panache. Assane Diop, a Senegalese French charmer, swindler, and revenge-seeker, arrives at a secret meeting in Paris’s Jardin du Luxembourg wearing a bicycle courier’s orange vest. When the police swoop in, determined to take their target into custody, a troop of similarly clad deliverymen race into the park and cause a ruckus. Assane, having arranged the diversion, slips the net, a master of disguise in the age of gig work.
Creative bamboozlement is only one of the pleasures that await viewers of Lupin, a show that combines Mametian reversals and double-crosses with an affecting story of family redemption. Assane, beautifully played by the French actor and comedian Omar Sy (Jurassic World), is the son of an immigrant chauffeur who died in prison after a false allegation of theft. A trickster with noble impulses and no small amount of talent, Assane has made it his mission to clear his father’s name by uncovering the plot to frame him. The necklace at the heart of that conspiracy is a worthy MacGuffin, having passed through the hands of Marie Antoinette, Napoleon, and Hitler, yet it is the business tycoon Hubert Pellegrini (Herve Pierre) who merits the bulk of our hero’s attention. Upon securing the jewelry in a thrilling pilot episode, Assane must scour the city for the evidence that will expose Pellegrini’s corruption.
Inspired by the Arsene Lupin novels of French author Maurice Leblanc, Netflix’s series is a refreshing reminder of the joys of low-tech chicanery. An operator every bit as smooth as Ian Fleming’s famous character (let the “first black Bond” chatter commence), Sy’s Assane requires only a quick pair of hands and the power of suggestion as he enlists the unsuspecting in his cause. A gentleman thief in the style of Leblanc’s beloved protagonist, Assane insinuates himself into prisons, penthouses, and multimillion-dollar auctions with little but a word and a smile. Separating Lupin from lesser fare is not only its renunciation of gadget cliches but the perfect lightness of its tone, illustrated, for example, by Assane’s use of a fake Wikipedia page to pull off a heist. Let the Bond franchise have its raving villains and tedious double-entendres. Lupin makes do with spontaneity, visual flair, and drama on a human scale.
Aiding mightily in the series’s attainment of the latter is the decision of creators George Kay and Francois Uzan to give significant screen time to Assane’s family life. A protective father as well as a vengeful son, Assane endeavors to keep his quest a secret from his 14-year-old son, Raoul (Etan Simon), despite the fact that it is the boy’s lineage that he means to restore. Less easily fooled is Raoul’s mother, Claire (an excellent Ludivine Sagnier), who vacillates between fondness for the charismatic Assane and frustration at his refusal to keep normal hours or cease telling obvious lies. First introduced to American audiences in the 2003 thriller Swimming Pool, Sagnier has since done good work in the anthology film Paris, Je T’aime and the HBO melodrama The Young Pope. Here, as Assane’s long-suffering partner and friend, the actress is by turns warm, flirty, sexy, humorous, compassionate, and disapproving. Her layered performance provides Lupin with a much-needed domestic gravity.
Of similar effectiveness is Lupin’s ability to move smoothly through time as it explores its characters’ complicated pasts. Orphaned and alone in his adopted country, the teenage Assane spends time in a state-run home before being invited to attend an expensive private academy. This reversal of fortune, paid for by an anonymous benefactor, is yet one more strand in the web of mystery surrounding Assane’s luckless father.
Financial intrigue notwithstanding, however, it is the young Assane’s relationship with two adolescent girls that lends Lupin’s flashbacks their narrative power. The first of these couplings, between Assane and a school-age Claire, gives depth to their present-day scenes by dramatizing the source of Claire’s stubborn loyalty. The second, which pairs Assane with Pellegrini’s daughter, introduces the cold fact of social class and supplies the writers with (delicately handled) thematic material. That the child actors in question are uniformly skilled and well-cast merely reinforces the efficacy of these sequences.
If a single ingredient holds Lupin’s many pieces together, it is the performance of Sy in the lead role, a portrayal so finely gauged that the Frenchman hardly seems to be acting at all. Blessed with a hulking frame and an enigmatic charm, Sy dominates Lupin’s proceedings to an extent that brings to mind Jon Hamm’s primacy on Mad Men or Hugh Laurie’s command of the medical drama House. The show is simply unimaginable without him. Though much of the actor’s time on-screen is spent in varying states of duress, my favorite recollection is of a quieter moment. Locking eyes with the Mona Lisa while sweeping a gallery floor, Sy’s Assane flashes a grin that is at once conspiratorial, placating, and shy. Of course he feels a connection to Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, the viewer realizes. His own thoughts are just as inscrutable.
As with the Belgian procedural The Break or the Spanish soap-drama Cable Girls, Netflix has made Lupin available with dubbed English-language dialogue, as well as in its original tongue with appropriate subtitles. The first of these options is about as authentic as a corporate social justice commercial. The second, mellifluous French spoken by trained actors, is a delight to hear. Along with Lupin’s gorgeous shots of the Louvre, the Normandy coast, and the Paris cityscape, it represents a notable part of the series’s appeal.
Yet whether one braves subtitles or insists, provincially, on spoken English, Lupin is stylish, flawlessly cast, and a superb addition to Netflix’s winter lineup. Watch it.
Graham Hillard teaches English and creative writing at Trevecca Nazarene University.
