If you've opened Prime Video in the last few days, you can't have missed Anaon, without even having to take a look. The SVoD service has particularly highlighted the French series, in a promotional campaign aimed at its subscribers. A strategy that's paying off, since the show by Bastien Dartois (En Terrasse, Panda) currently occupies sixth place in the Top 10, a good indicator of the number of curious viewers who have responded.
From there to imagining this Top as a good indicator of quality... the presence of G20 in first place answers the question. We therefore had to judge on the basis of the evidence whether the show deserved its position, with nevertheless a certain interest, Anaon offering a plot cradled by Breton folklore and an atmosphere similar to Stranger Things.
The story of Anaon in a few words
In Harz, a fictional town in Brittany, Max, a gendarmerie major, and his daughter Wendy try to get their lives back on track after the tragic death of the latter's mother, which occurred a month earlier in strange circumstances. Quickly, Max must shed light on the mysterious disappearance of a young teenager. For her part, Wendy, back at school, will experience a series of events that will lead her to investigate with her friends.
Max and Wendy will go from discovery to discovery, between suspicious individuals, supernatural phenomena and victims found alive, but as if dispossessed of something. It's not easy to come to terms with it under these conditions.
Anaon or Anaoff?
We must admit to being pleasantly surprised by Anaon's introduction. Well, his American inspiration is obvious. We could easily replace all the elements with a famous Netflix series. Harz is a Breton Hawkins and the kids reenacting the Famous Five without the consent of adults, with powers and creatures from another world... It would be highly hypocritical of the authors to cry out about unfortunate coincidences, as there are so many of them.
We won't throw stones at them. There are countless French-language series that want to compete in the same league as Uncle Sam, and there are enough local influences in Anaon to develop its own mythology without crying out about plagiarism. The first episode sets an atmosphere that oscillates quite well between thriller and fantasy, and the following five episodes continue to follow this path until they inevitably end up connecting the dots in a conclusion that suggests a second season.
The series shows a certain ambition, particularly in terms of special effects, with a monster that is visually impressive, aided by David Hourrège's direction. The director is a graduate of the so-called "Gueules Noires" school and knows that to achieve the horrific effect of a creature, you must avoid putting it in too much bright light or spending too long with the camera on it. For a mainstream show, the atmosphere is successful with some effective terrifying sequences. The emotional side of the show, embodied by the duo Max and Wendy, is handled with sincerity and we are treated to a real look at grief. The issue of the two plots is not so much the resolution of the latter (we will come back to this), but how the father and his daughter will once again open up to each other and listen to each other. It's sometimes a cliché, but we get caught up in the game through the involvement of the actors, especially the young Capucine Malarre.
While we may feel sympathy for Anaon because she honestly tries to do her best, we cannot deny her inability to rise above the charming little series that will not be remembered. This is due to an execution that tries hard and does not always succeed. From one scene to the next, we are tossed between a captivating passage and an expected twist, between a well-filmed action sequence and a nervousness worthy of an episode of Julie Lescaut. Adequate acting can be used to serve unworthy dialogue, when it is not the other way around. Brittany itself is not a theater of operations specifically used except for its legends. In short, we swing between the solid fantasy thriller and the classic TF1 production occupying a time slot for cheap. We really liked one while the other systematically turned us off.
Too clumsy, Anaon shouldn't dominate Prime Video's Top 10 for long - and even then, we might be surprised -, nevertheless, it deserves to find its audience for its desire to want and its more qualitative aspects. The kind of project we didn't believe in, proving us right more than once, but that we want to support without having received a check for (contrary to popular belief). The streaming platform has already offered us much less appreciable French productions; and the list is long enough that we don't have to include Anaon.
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