Attacked with a flesh-thumping hammer, hit in the shins with a baseball bat and the vagina “broken” by heterogeneous objects – the new season of A Heartbeat, which begins on Tuesday, September 12th at 8 p.m., does not float in lightness. But not at all, sir.
Updated at 7:15am yesterday.
In fact, the new episodes I saw on Thursday show us that the two heroes of Radio-Canada’s popular soap opera are struggling and failing in their fight against domestic violence. Overwhelmed by violent panic attacks, psycho-educator Christophe L’Allier’s (Roy Dupuis) Teflon armor breaks for the first time since his appearance in Tout la vie in autumn 2019.
We understand why our good and devoted Christophe is freaking out. The final episode aired in the spring revealed that Christophe’s mother, the very disturbed Édith (Micheline Lanctôt), sexually abused him during his childhood and that she even photographed these horrific acts.
Let’s also not forget that Christophe’s little sister, the drug addict Julie (Larissa Corriveau), the mother of the HIV-positive twins, committed suicide in prison and that the same Julie was raped by her own brother, the police officer Patrick (Jean-Nicolas Verreault ).
In summary: The L’Alliers are a nasty family of wankers.
No wonder Christophe talks about his “shitty childhood,” which he didn’t survive without injuries.
And Christophe has not yet finished the battle with his completely inadequate and manipulative mother, who lives in a group home and is cured of stomach cancer, an important detail in the story of A Beating Heart.
Now there’s news from fierce prosecutor Gabrielle Laflamme (Ève Landry), who ended the spring season with a shot in the crook of her elbow. Foreseeable spoiler: No, Gabrielle isn’t dead. And no, you won’t immediately recognize the substance she started injecting into her veins again.
Thanks to several flashbacks, you will understand where this Gabrielle Laflamme comes from and why she behaves so honestly and uncompromisingly in her work as a Crown attorney. Gabrielle’s father, Hervé Dubois (Marc Messier), has all the keys to the mystery.
Friendly reminder here: The enigmatic Hervé Dubois murdered his secretary and then Gabrielle’s mother in front of him when Gabrielle was 12 years old. The murder weapon: a steak tenderizer. It’s the kind of traumatic event that scares you for life, isn’t it?
When Gabrielle learned that her murderous father was applying for parole, to which he is legally entitled, she broke off and resorted to old defense mechanisms. A new addition, Dr. Windbourne (Roger Léger), will support him in his recovery.
Speaking of the new character: Catherine De Léan, aka Me Véronique Lenoir in District 31, cut her long hair very, very short to play the policewoman Éloïse Pelletier, a stupid woman, zero empathy and enemy of the friendly investigator Fabien Gauthier (Maxime Mailloux) . ). She’s unrecognizable and we already love to hate her.
At the same time, the author Danielle Trottier, never lacking in inspiration, completes the intrigues of À coeur bleue that began in the spring, including that of the police officer Bertrand “Bert” Campeau” (Jérémie Jacob), who was injured in both eyes after he shot at the woman’s gravestone, whom he had killed himself. When things go well…
“A Beating Heart” also brings back the Lazik family, whose mother Aleksa (Antoinette Fekete), who doesn’t speak French, was found in a sorry state on a concrete block. The police had accused her husband and son of beating her. In court, the Laziks’ lawyer presents a completely different version of the facts.
There is no funny or nice way to talk about domestic violence on a TV show. And “At Heart Beating,” which is watched by 967,000 believers, is not the kind of show you can consume in bursts. The episodes are busy and the cases narrated are very difficult.
Nevertheless, we won’t get bored watching this soap opera carefully directed by Jean-Philippe Duval.
Yes, it’s hard to watch. In the second episode, a young woman (Stéphanie Desrochers) appears in the emergency room with lesions all over her body, including her genitals, which have been destroyed by various objects. According to her partner (Raphaël Lacaille), the victim agreed to these extremely violent acts.
In the first episode, the scene where the disgusting Julio Montoya (Guillaume Champoux) attacks his wife Sylvie (Sasha Migliarese) with a baseball bat is heartbreaking. We feel helpless, as if we scream in front of our screens in the same way we rage when we read newspaper articles that tell the same stories, but set in Notre-Dame-des-Prairies or Pointe-aux-Trembles.
Some of you will probably say: I can’t and won’t watch this, the world is bad enough, I need to watch something else to relax. I understand.
Fortunately, the episodes of A Beating Heart prove to us that there are good people who have their hearts in the right place and save lives. This is calming and reassuring.