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I’m going to level with you: I don’t really like Marseille. It’s this really silly French drama on Netflix that really, really wants to be House of Cards, but with gangsters and soccer stadiums and casinos and fancy musician ladies who can’t hold a bow anymore because their one hand is paralyzed. That could all be overlooked, but the show’s biggest problem is it wants me to take Gerard “Peed on a Plane” Depardieu seriously as towering provincial political figure Robert Taro. I can’t. I just can’t. I look at him and think, “That man peed on a plane.”
What I can say is that Marseille Season 2 is way better than Marseille Season 1, and this marked improvement has everything to do with a new character named Jeanne Coste.
When we first meet pretty, blonde Jeanne Coste (Natacha Renier), she’s passing a homeless woman begging for food. She pauses for a moment, and with a smile, takes out a red pen and corrects the woman’s misspelled message. Then she walks on to meet with her far-right cronies and she proceeds to plot the downfall of Gerard Depardieu’s character. I love her.
Now if you have anything close to a passing knowledge of French politics, it will be hard for you to meet this new character and not think of former French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. Like Le Pen, Jeanne Coste is a ruthless ambassador for a far right party. Jeanne uses her feminine charms to seduce people to her side in a way that’s reminiscent of how Le Pen managed to charm people into accepting some of her more radically conservative ideas. As the season marches on, Jeanne Coste sneaks more and more of her conservative platforms into the conversation. Oh, and she has an affair with the new mayor she helps elect. It’s all very sexy and seedy and Natacha Renier is great in the part. Did Marine Le Pen pull anything like this? Probably not. But this is a soap opera.
Does Jeanne Coste alone make Marseille a good soap opera? Eh, not really, but she does help distract you from the memory that Gerard Depardieu peed on a plane.
