Top 5 TV Series of 2014

As you probably imagine, not only Zazie spends much of her time in the dark of cinema theatres, but also when she’s home, she can’t help herself but spending time watching TV series.
TV Series are the new Movies, let’s admit it. 

Sometimes it’s hard to find in cinema the same level of originality, boldness and amazement that you can find in television products.
There are so many jewels out there, that it’s basically impossible to see them all, but Zazie tried her best. So, starting from 2015, besides the usual TOP 10 of Best Pictures (wait, it will be published soon!), Zazie will share with you her TOP 5 of Best TV series!
Aren't you excited??!
One word before I start, for the TV series freaks like me: yes, I have seen True Detective and Fargo but for some reasons they didn't excite me as much as I thought. I liked them, I enjoyed to see them very much, but I forgot about them too soon. And this is not a good sign, as far as I'm concerned. 

Also, I would like to mention a couple of TV mini-series that really made my day:

Olive Kitteridge by Jane Anderson & Elizabeth Strout

Because I can't stop thinking about the incredible performances of Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins:

Quirke by John Banville, Andrew Davies and Conor McPherson

Because I can't stop thinking about Gabriel Byrne... (hey, I'm a blogger, not a saint!):

And here's my list:

5 - Transparent by Jill Soloway
From one of the scenarists of Six Feet Under (yes, she can!), the story of a dysfunctional but irresistible modern family in contemporary Los Angeles: the son is loosing his job and his mind over too many women, one of the two daughters doesn't know what to do with her life and the other one is leaving her family for another woman. The mother, divorced, is fed up of taking care of her second and very ill husband and the father, well, the father is a trans. Too over-the-top not to be irresistible, and Jeffrey Tambor yesterday night won the Golden Globe for this part. 
Well done, Maura!

4 – Mad Men/Season 7 (1st part) by Matthew Weiner
Waiting for the End of an Era, we witness Don Draper and his kind entering a new time in history: the ‘70s. Set between a cold and dark New York and a warm and sunny Los Angeles, the adventures of this bunch of advertising men and women is slowly but inexorably going towards the abyss. Nobody is doing the right thing, here. Lost in a changing and unrecognizable world, our heroes keep making mistakes and turning in circles. 

Where all this is going? To hell, most probably.
And I personally can’t wait to see it (even if, I know, I’ll feel like an orphan, afterwards).

3 - The Affair by Hagai Levi & Sarah Treem
From the creators of In Treatment (Santi Subito!), the story of a love affair that would torture anybody’s heart. Noah and Alison are both married but they can’t help themselves: they become lovers during a summer in the Hamptons. Questioned months later by a NY detective about the death of somebody they both knew, they talk about the same episodes but in a completely different way. 
Divided in two parts of 30 minutes each, reporting first Noah and then Alison’s version, this modern Rashomon is one of the finest things you can come across. Besides the great screenplay, the two (British, of course!) main actors raise the bar at the highest levels. 
Dominic West and Ruth Wilson (she just won a Golden Globe for this role) are so amazing that you want to fiercely believe in both their versions.

2 - The Knick by Jack Amiel & Michael Begley
Once we were butchers. 
In a Manhattan hospital at the beginning of last century, a group of brave (and a bit crazy) surgeons try their best to save peoples’ lives using new techniques.
Forget about ER, Grey’s Anatomy and Dr. House: things are much worse here. There’s blood everywhere, inside and outside the hospital, surgeons are under drugs or fighting for their (black) rights. It’s a mess, but it’s a great one. Steven Soderbergh is the magician behind the camera of each episode. The dark sepia light in which this world is living is intoxicating: you can’t get enough of it.
And Episode 7 is possibly the best thing I’ve seen this year.

1 – The Fall/Season 2 by Allan Cubitt
Yes, I know, the first season of The Fall was just a very good and intriguing new series.
The story of a serial killer in Belfast who’s attacking and viciously killing young women and of the Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson, called from London to investigate and solve the case.
This second series, well, this second one is something else.
The serial killer is not killing anymore, the policemen hating bad men finds out to have one inside of him (great John Lynch) and Stella (magnificent Gillian Anderson) is shining like a rising star, as her name promises: a single and very sexy woman obliged to live in a men’s world, not afraid of being afraid, not justifying herself for her commitment-free (and possibly bi-sexual) love life, not worried of being smarter and stronger than any other man around her.
As you’ve probably understood: this was love at first sight.

Sister Act

Gillian Anderson as Stella Gibson in The Fall (BBC 2)

I have always been accused to be too straightforward with men.
And I can’t deny it.
I sincerely don’t understand why, if I like someone, I should wait ages before announcing it to him.
I basically live following Don Drapers’s principle: I’m living like there is no tomorrow, because there isn’t one. 

In a couple of occasions, I made love declarations and/or indecent proposals after few hours I met the object of my desire.

This approach isn’t always working, I admit it.
As per the First Rule of the non-written Law of Seduction, men prefer hunting instead of being hunted. And as boring as this could sound (at least to my ears), and regardless of the fact that we are now in 2013, it looks like this is still - and quite sadly will always be - the case.
Most women are horrified too by this approach. I envy them. I wish I could feel the same way. I wish I could be like them.
In movies too, it is not that frequent to come across female characters who clearly express their desires.
In this sense, TV series have always been ahead: I mean, even if it is not one of my favourite series, it is a fact that, before Sex and the City, nobody had the guts of talking in such realistic way of what sex/love/relationship really mean for women.
Last week-end, I’ve seen a new TV series (5 episodes in total, the last episode still to be broadcast) called The Fall. 

Set in contemporary Belfast, The Fall follows in parallel the life of a serial killer, Paul Spector, and the one of the Detective Superintendent who’s trying to track him down, Stella Gibson. Played by American actress Gillian Anderson, Stella is one of the most refreshing characters I’ve ever seen on screen. Stella is forty-something, independent, self-confident, ironic, single, a bit tough and diffident (almost glacial, sometimes), and more than straightforward towards men.

In one scene, she did something that really thrilled me, and made me feel like a novice compared to her: at a crime scene on the street, at night, Stella noticed a good looking police-man, detective sergeant James Olson. Stella asks the colleague who’s in the car with her, to be introduced to the man. A second afterwards the presentation, she said to Olson, who looks at her in disbelief: "I’m staying in this hotel, room n° 203". 

The following scene shows, of course, the door of room n° 203. 
Somebody is knocking at it. Useless to say, it is James Olson. The door opens, Stella looks at him. 

"I wasn’t sure what you meant when you gave me your room number", the man begins.
Stella moves the sign Do not disturb from the inside handle to the outside handle.
"This is what I meant", she answers, bringing the man into the room.
Wow! I was so admired. And what a relief!
At least on screen, I have a sister who acts like me.

L'Enfant d'en haut

Ho una passione tutta speciale per i film in cui non accade assolutamente nulla.
Più la trama è scarna, e più mi sembra che tra le pieghe delle immagini possano nascondersi delle belle sorprese. Questa regola a volte non funziona, ma trovo che valga sempre la pena di provarci. Quando si guarda questo tipo di film bisogna fare uno sforzo in più rispetto a quelli soliti. Bisogna cercare di lasciar perdere quel bisogno atavico che si ha di vedere dell'azione quando si sta davanti ad uno schermo, bisogna smettere di pensare che sì, sì, adesso succede qualcosa, adesso la trama ha senz'altro un'accellerazione. Ecco, se si entra in quel meccanismo, di solito si finisce con l'irritarsi e rimanere delusi. Se invece si decide di fare un passo indietro e di dare la possibilità al film di andare dove vuole e di farsi semplicemente trascinare dalla corrente, allora succede che si viene ricompensati. Purtroppo, a volte, il rischio di questo tipo di cinema è che sia un  mero esercizio estetico fine a se stesso, l'ennesima pippa mentale della quale avremmo fatto volentieri a meno. 
Ieri sera ho visto un film in cui non accadeva molto, ma quel poco che accadeva mi piaceva tantissimo e mi è rimasto appicciato addosso come una seconda pelle. Si tratta del film svizzero-francese L'Enfant d'en haut, di Ursula Meier, vincitore del Leone d'Argento all'ultimo Festival di Berlino. 

I protagonisti del film sono Simon, 12 anni, e sua sorella Louise, poco più che ventenne. Abbandonati a loro stessi (dei genitori non si fa cenno, anche se Simon racconta che sono morti in un incidente d'auto... ma come stanno veramente le cose?), vivono in un brutto appartamento di un brutto stabile di un brutto posto. Un posto non meglio specificato che sta ai piedi di una montagna dove la gente d'inverno si affolla per sciare. Louise non ha un lavoro stabile e ha la tendenza a perderlo piuttosto di frequente. Simon, che sembra non andare a scuola, passa il tempo a rubacchiare paia di sci, caschi, occhiali e altri oggetti, che poi rivende qua e là. E' con questi soldi che i fratelli, in realtà, riescono a sopravvivere. Le cose vanno avanti in maniera disordinata e vagamente insensata, sino a quando la fine della stagione sciistica mette in evidenza la durezza della loro esistenza.

Non ho visto, e ora me ne pento, il primo film della Meier, Home, ma pare che la regista privilegi, per raccontare le sue storie, dei non-luoghi tipici del mondo contemporaneo: in Home una casa sperduta sul ciglio di un'autostrada, e qui un palazzo ai piedi una montagna incombente. In molti hanno scomodato riferimenti ai Fratelli Dardenne, per questo film, e non mi stupisce affatto che sia piaciuto moltissimo ad un regista come Mike Leigh (che era, guarda caso, il presidente della giuria del Festival di Berlino).  
Tutti loro, sono registi che amano occuparsi di personaggi che la maggior parte delle persone non vorrebbero avere vicino nella loro vita di ogni giorno, figuriamoci trovarseli su uno schermo: gli emarginati, i senza niente, gli sbandati, i non-amati.
L'Enfant d'en haut è un film angosciante e cupo, attraversato però da una vitalità incontrollata, e dove tutta l'insensatezza della vita moderna è racchiusa nella distanza tra gli impianti di discesa e risalita. Personalmente, a questo film perdono anche i suoi difetti più evidenti perché trovo Simon un personaggio assolutamente irresistibile. E' talmente disarmante con quel suo modo di fare un po' spaccone e sicuro di sé che nasconde in realtà una mancanza d'amore, un bisogno d'affetto, e un luogo sicuro che lo protegga, da renderlo adorabile. Un piccolo Antoine Doinel dell'era moderna, cresciuto troppo in fretta e già troppo solitario e ferito. L'attore che lo interpreta, Kacey Mottet Klein, è veramente incredibile. Lo avevo già apprezzato nella parte di Serge Gainsbourg da piccolo nel film di Sfarr sulla vita del cantante, e pare che avesse già una parte in Home, ma in questo film, non c'è nulla da fare, spacca! 

Léa Seydoux nella parte di Louise è semplicemente perfetta, una giovane attrice che ha smesso di essere una promessa per passare a giusto titolo nella ristretta cerchia delle più brave attrici francesi in circolazione. E fa piacere trovare, in ruoli piccoli ma importanti, attori come Gillian Anderson (quella di X-Files, per intenderci), Jean-François Stévenin, storico attore francese, e lo scozzese Martin Compston, volto familiare nei film di Ken Loach. 
Uscendo dal cinema, non so spiegarvi bene perché, ero abbastanza fiera del fatto di non saper sciare. 
Mi sa che all'alto, alla fine, io preferisco il basso.