Because Sambre is an important series on gender and sexual violence

“Do you want my opinion, Mrs. Labot? You were lucky.” These are the words pronounced by the captain during the victim’s testimony, in shock after being brutally attacked early in the morning, on the Sambre river, in northern France. She lost consciousness during the attack and woke up lying with her sweater pulled over her breasts. After inappropriate and misleading questions (“What were you doing alone in the morning? Did he have an accent?”), the captain told Christine Labot that it was a failed flight.

In the heads of the victims

At the end of this first episode, of chilling realism, a message appears: “This series aims to pay tribute to the victims.” If only the victims of Dino Scala (renamed Enzo Salina in the series) can tell us whether the series has achieved its goal, the screenwriters Marc Herpoux and Alice Géraud (author of the book “Sambre. Radioscopie d’un fait divers”, which serves fundamental series) and director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade wanted to give the victims their rightful place.

Adapting true news to fiction carries the risk of sensationalism. Thus avoiding any voyeuristic temptation, the director chooses to film almost without aggression and to multiply the points of view, without ever losing sight of the number of victims that is accumulating. Each episode adopts the perspective of a protagonist of this story, which began in 1988 and ended in 2018, with the arrest of Enzo Salina.

Focusing on Christine Labot, played with great precision by Alix Poisson, the first episode proves this to what extent the police are unable to accept the words of women victims of sexual violence. Nothing is right, neither in the lack of empathy, nor in the inability to listen to the victim, who provides important clues, such as the smell of grease from her attacker.

Sambre It also examines the psychological consequences of the assault for the victim, both short and long term. In constant hypervigilance, Christine suffers from insomnia and paranoia. She takes refuge in bulimia and her husband ends up leaving her. His whole life was turned upside down by this attack., which also impacted his daughter’s life many years later. Other female characters, victims of the rapist, are portrayed with equal care, while the police put the evidence in a refrigerator, between croissants and coffee, and the rapes and poorly made reports continue in general indifference.

The dysfunctions of patriarchal justice

In the 1990s, a judge finally takes the case seriously and makes the connection between the rapes, but he also has to deal with the sexism of the judicial and police environment. The third episode highlights the dispute between Arlette Caruso (the fantastic Noémie Lvovsky), mayor of an industrial town in the Sambre, one of whose employees is the victim of Enzo Salina. This character, based on Annick Mattighello, former mayor of Louvroil, can be seen the cost of violating the law of silence, both for victims and whistleblowers. A few years later, she is a data scientist, played by Clémence Poesy, who is on the verge of finding the culprit. Scientific methods have evolved, but the patriarchy of justice and police not so much.

In 2012 the case was taken over by the service cold case of the PJ, led by commander Étienne Winckler (a very good Olivier Gourmet). His benevolent methods of approaching victims contrast with those of a police force still poorly trained to accept the words of rape victims. A terrible scene in the latest episode, set in 2018, reveals a catastrophic deposition, during which a police officer treats a traumatized minor, Salina’s victim, like a liar. We understand this, at the end of the six episodes of Sambre how the dysfunctions of the police (incomplete or distorted statements from rape victims, poorly preserved evidence, etc.) and the justice system allowed the Sambre rapist to operate in France and Belgium for 30 years. These dysfunctions are systemic and explain why the figures for sexual violence against women are still so catastrophic in France in 2023.

The rapist was ‘a good father’

The last episode focuses on the rapist Enzo Salina, whose life we ​​also follow in bits and pieces throughout the series. The audience knows his identity from the beginning, which does not detract from the dramaturgy. A worker, this man with no previous criminal record and no criminal record is married and the father of a family. The writers paint the portrait of a man with two faces, with worrying outbursts in private, but always pleasant in public. A man who knows how to lie perfectly and manipulate the police and those around him.

The character of Enzo Salina corresponds to the figure of the “good father”, above all suspicion and recently dissected by Rose Lamy in her essay “En bonne pères de famille”, released in September 2023. In the series, the rapist is a youth football coach. Helpful, good friend, he is an ordinary man. A portrait that is both terrifying and realistic: in 91% of cases of rape and attempted rape, the victim knows the attacker. He is a father, a brother, a friend, and he doesn’t have “rapist” written on his forehead. One of the great successes of Sambre it is from ddemystify the figure of the rapist.

A series of public utilities

Online on France TV Slash and broadcast on France 2 in November, Sambre I knew a surprise public success, with an average of over 3 million viewers in front of the screen and a record on the France TV platform. This is delicious news, given the quality of the series, both in its topics and in its directorial choices or impeccable cast.

If the United States has incrediblea brilliant series released in 2019 on Netflix on the same theme of women victims of rape that we don’t believe in, In France there was no reference work. It’s over Sambrea fair and powerful series, which haunts you long after viewing. And which, we hope, will pave the way for better representation of sexist and sexual violence against women on French screens.