Extra-Lucide: the series that gets things right (review)

An original variation on the concept of superpower anchored in the real world, carried by an impressive Camille Rutherford as a reclusive telepath.

Have you always dreamed of being a telepath? To be able to read other people’s minds? Bad idea!

This is what Denise tells you in Extra-Lucide, the new OCS / Ciné+ series (to watch via MyCanal) which is released today. A minimalist and captivating French creation, which takes up the concept of superpower, to better anchor it in reality. Here, no avengers in tights or mental battles to make Charles Xavier shudder.

Extra-Lucide takes the mutant (or more precisely the mutant here) through his most intimate prism. Because for Denise, this gift is not a privilege but a burden that she has carried around since childhood. Everything she touches becomes transparent: secrets, fleeting thoughts, unspeakable desires. Impossible to protect yourself, impossible to escape. Ordinary life is forbidden to him, sentimental relationships become emotional minefields, and each encounter is a cruel reminder that absolute lucidity is not desirable.

Camille Rutherford, romantic revelation in the film Jane Austen ruined my life (in 2024), embodies with breathtaking sobriety this thirty-year-old prisoner of her telepathy. By slaloming between the pitfalls of asthenic malaise and fantastic madness, she gives life to a unique character, who refuses to define himself other than by his power. At his side, Sabrina Ouazani injects the lightness and disorder needed to counterbalance this almost painful dramatic tension.

Above all, the creators, Bruno Merle and Emmanuelle Destremau, transform the production’s modest budget into a strength: confining their heroine to her apartment, they make Extra-Lucide a closed-door session where each shot is cleverly thought out to paint a melancholic picture, where the fantastical is at the service of the intimate. We laugh sometimes, but above all we remain captivated by this scathing autopsy of the most secret human nature.

Prize for best series and best direction at the last La Rochelle Festival, Extra-Lucide was right: a clever and cleverly staged concept.