''The Rope'' (french: La Corde) is a French
thriller miniseries created by Dominique Rocher, and Éric Forestier.
The story follows a group of scientists at a remote Norwegian
ground station who find a mysterious rope nearby in the woods.
Plot
At a remote
ground station somewhere in northern Norway, renowned scientists Bernhardt Mueller and his wife Agnès are leading a team to research
FRBs.
They hope to receive authorization soon to implement a protocol on which they have been working for fifteen years. When the approval is given the celebrations are interrupted by a weird discovery. Some of the team members find a seemingly endless rope that suddenly appears at the edge of the forest. Bernhardt decides to lead a group of six which include Sophie, Serge, Leila, Joseph and Dani to follow the rope. Bernhardt eventually becomes hesitant and chooses to go back to the station. Along the way back though, he falls down a steep cliff and is killed. As the remaining five continue following the rope, concern for their well-being has set in back at the station. While Agnès worries about her husband, she takes advantage of his absence to spend time with her secret lover Ulrik.
Eventually a rescue team is formed to search the area which turns up no results. While following the rope far ahead Sophie has a healing vision, and Leila is entranced by the rope which gives both of them determination to follow the rope to the end. The remaining five members eventually find the bodies of previous followers. Dani has a vision that night of a talking corpse who tells her they had a disagreement that turned violent about whether to continue or not. In frustration she tries to cut the rope the following morning but is killed by Sophie before doing so. Leila sneaks off the morning after to follow the rope on her own which leads her husband Joseph to search for her. Serge is left alone with Sophie where he kills her in a murderous rage. Back at the station the time soon comes to experiment with the protocol. The police have given up all hope of finding the missing team members having searched for 3 weeks.
Agnès refuses to face the reality of her loss while concurrently her experimental protocol ends in failure. When Ulrik understands why their scientific experiment failed, she regains hope and decides to find Bernhardt herself by following the rope. She eventually finds his remains and is given peace knowing she can finally move on and be with Ulrik. Agnès decides to retire from the field of Astronomy after her protocol is a success. When she goes to Ulrik though, he informs her that he had waited long enough for her. Meanwhile, far down the rope the remaining two survivors Leila and Joseph find each other in a vast desert. The two reconcile then argue the following day after Joseph doesn't recognize her. Joseph ends up killing his wife and continues to follow the rope until it is revealed to the audience that it intersects with another rope.
Cast
*
Suzanne Clément
Suzanne Clément (born 12 May 1969) is a Canadian actress. She is known for her work in Xavier Dolan's arthouse films ''I Killed My Mother'' (2009), '' Laurence Anyways'' (2012), and '' Mommy'' (2014).
With Emilie DeQuenne, she shared the Un Ce ...
as Agnès Mueller
*
Jean-Marc Barr
Jean-Marc Barr (born September 27, 1960) is a French-American film actor and director. He is best known for working on several films from Danish film director and frequent collaborator Lars von Trier since ''Europa'' (1991).
Early life and ed ...
as Serge Morel
*
Christa Théret
Christa Théret (born 25 June 1991) is a French actress, best known for her role of Andrée Heuschling in ''Renoir''.
Early life
As a child, Théret aspired to be a teacher and then to become an actress.
Career
Théret's acting career began a ...
as Leïla
*
Tom Mercier as Joseph
*
Richard Sammel
Richard Sammel (born 13 October 1960) is a German actor. He is best known for his role as Thomas Eichhorst on the FX television series ''The Strain'' (2014–2017).
He has appeared in more than 100 films and television series since 1991.
Per ...
as Bernhardt Mueller
*
Jakob Cedergren
Jakob Cedergren (born 10 January 1973) is a Swedish-born Danish actor. He has appeared in more than 40 films and television shows since 1998. He starred in the film '' Dark Horse'', which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2005 ...
as Ulrik
* Planitia Kenese as Dani Johannes
*
Jeanne Balibar
Jeanne Balibar (born 13 April 1968) is a French actress and singer.
Life and career
Balibar was born in Paris, the daughter of Marxist philosopher Étienne Balibar and physicist Françoise Balibar.
She started her career as a student in th ...
as Sophie Rauk
* Gilles Vandeweerd as Liam
*
Isabelle de Hertogh
Isabelle de Hertogh (born 1972) is a Belgian actress.
Debut
She was a student at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels
The Royal Conservatory of Brussels (french: Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles, nl, Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel) is a hi ...
as Hélène
Production
While ''The Rope'' was directed by Dominique Rocher, it was originally based on a German novel by
Stefan aus dem Siepen.
The original novel is set in the
19th century and involves farmers from a village.
Co-creator Éric Forestier noted that the story was handled in a "very binary way" with the men following the rope while the women stayed at the village.
He stated that while the book "obviously has qualities", he wanted to give the story a modern retelling.
The series was greenlit, and was eventually produced by ''Les Films de l'Instant'' in co-production with
Arte France
Arte (; (), sometimes stylized in lowercase or uppercase in its logo) is a European public service channel dedicated to culture.
It is made up of three separate companies: the Strasbourg-based European Economic Interest Grouping ARTE, plu ...
and ''Versus Production''.
Scenes involving the "remote" Norwegian ground station were shot at the former Lessive Space Telecommunications Earth Station (now called "Le Jardin des Paraboles") in the village of
Han-sur-Lesse, Belgium.
Additional scenes were also shot in the nearby village of Havrenne with permission from the
municipality
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...
.
The cafe used towards the end of the series is located in the Belgian city of
Namur which was meant to be
Oslo
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population ...
Norway for the story.
Filming of the series as a whole took place in France, Belgium, and Morocco from October 14 to November 27, 2020.
Reception
Dorothée Barba from
Radio France
Radio France is the French national public radio broadcaster.
Stations
Radio France offers seven national networks:
* France Inter — Radio France's " generalist" station, featuring entertaining and informative talk mixed with a wide variety o ...
compared the series to
The Blair Witch Project
''The Blair Witch Project'' is a 1999 American supernatural horror film written, directed and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. It is a fictional story of three student filmmakers—Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Josh ...
by saying the audience should know that things will go wrong.
She also echoed the content warning at the start of each episode "This program has scenes not recommended for young or sensitive audiences."
Oliver Armknecht from film-rezensionen.de said that while the story was familiar to German audiences, the adaptation of the novel involving space exploration adds a "charming parallel".
Armknecht gave the series a 7/10 rating by saying the series has no clear answer to the rope mystery, and requires the audience to think about all this for themselves.
Notes
References
External links
Official website(archived)
* {{IMDb Title, 15071814
French television miniseries
2021 French television series debuts
2021 French television series endings
2020s French television series