Between Heat and Spring Breakers: the influences of the series The Lionesses

This is the new French series that is causing a sensation on Netflix. A thriller of heists, which does not lack references. Meeting with the creators, Olivier Rosemberg and Carine Prévot.

Five women from the same city, in a small town in the south of France, decide to rob banks to get out of precariousness. Les Lionesses is obviously inspired by the Gang des Amazones, which left its mark on France in 1989, when women disguised as men robbed seven agencies in Vaucluse to get back on track. But very quickly, the Netflix series moves away from the news item. Firstly because it situates the action in our days. Then because it decides to detach itself from reality to have more fun in an “augmented reality”, as described for Première by the two creators, Olivier Rosemberg and Carine Prévot.

Taking the opposite view from the ordinary criminal social drama, they create a thunderous dramatic comedy, with marked cinematographic accents. Everything is colorful, flashy, eye-catching, to escape the cliché of the gray and gloomy city. Up to the big villain of the story, the truculent Ezekiel, gang leader with crazy clothes and a smile pimped out by jokes.

“I’m told a lot that Ezekiel looks like James Franco in Spring Breakers,” admits Olivier Rosemberg, who co-wrote the series and plays the character with the same madness as in the days of Family Business. He nevertheless clarifies that it is not entirely voluntary.

“It wasn’t initially thought of like that. We started by putting floral shirts on Ezekiel, because we’re in the South. We put rings in his teeth for fun. Big sneakers. We tested things, sketched things and it’s true that in the end… we ended up with a guy who looks a lot like the guy from Spring Breakers (laughs)!”

His writing partner, Carine Prévot, explains more generally that the AD (artistic direction) of the Lionesses is deliberately “very colorful. And that of Spring Breakers too. Totally neon. So yes, it makes you think of it. But the character of Ezekiel is colorful both literally and figuratively. He’s an excessive, colorful guy.”

Olivier Rosemberg actually tells us that he wanted to get away from the image of the traditional bad guy, “to get away from this convention of the thug that we see in France, dressed in football from head to toe. The city thug with his fanny pack across. The Anglo-Saxons are managing to get away from that. In Guy Ritchie, there are different bad guys. So we wanted to get away from the French stereotype. We even feminized him in fact. He has a neon pink Chanel bag. Buckles ears. A gold watch, and in the interpretation, I especially tried to be radical. If he’s dressed like a clown, I might as well go all out!”

Also director of the eight episodes of the series, Olivier Rosemberg was also able to have fun during the heist sequences.

Quite an exercise, “with a huge set-up, three cameras,” he tells us, to thoroughly explore these decisive moments for our five Lionesses. Moreover, Carine Prévot specifies that it was crucial to maintain “an action scene, while respecting the codes of the heist film”.

But with one big difference: “We absolutely wanted to show amateurs in action. Not to highlight the mediocrity of their method as apprentice robbers, but to highlight their hesitations when taking action.” And inevitably, he admits that he had plenty of references in mind, even if his approach was quite different:

“It’s clear that Heat is a reference of the genre, but in Heat, they are diligent mercenaries. They count every second. They know who is in charge. In Point Break, they are not beginners. They have already done plenty of heists. For us, it had to be more amateur than that.”

Olivier Rosemberg also explains how he put his five actresses in condition:

“The girls, we never made them rehearse the heists. So that they remain in a form of naivety. The weapons are heavy. With the suits, the beards, the glasses, the caps, the wigs… it’s hot and it’s hard to play. And yet, behind all that, we have to be able to feel feminine emotions. That’s why the heists last quite a long time. We stay with them for a long time, to feel what they’re going through. stress. The adrenaline of the moment. We didn’t do clipped scenes, like we cut and they come out and there they are, I tried to make the thing extremely nervous. There are no more wide shots.

The Lionesses, currently watching on Netflix.