Represent follows Stéphane Blé, a local youth center monitor from the suburbs, going up against the political giants to win the French presidential election.
Story
Stéphane Blé is a local monitor — the leader of a youth center in a Parisian suburb. However, he finds himself in the limelight when he verbally outclasses the mayor and presidential candidate Éric Andréï in front of the media.
Having gone viral and a significant amount of people actually seeing him as a fitting candidate for the office, Stéphane has to reluctantly run for it as well. Soon, William Crozon, his campaign director, kicks things off and forms a team.
Éric Andréï, fuming with the humiliation and the fact that his vote share is being siphoned off, decides to sabotage Stéphane’s campaign, but fails to budge it significantly.
Meanwhile, Crozon takes Stéphane to a rural town to entice the right-wing votes, which severs his ties with Etienne Durandeau, the candidate he’s been covertly working for all this time.
He then teams up with Éric Andréï and it results in Stéphane getting shot by a man. He recovers eventually and thankfully gets to have his testicles intact after the bullet grazes past one of them, but his ratings only plummet as a result.
Éric, meanwhile, exploits this situation and makes his approval ratings soar further high up than ever. Stéphane decides to drop out but William convinces him to enter back into the political arena.
A miracle transpires and three of the major candidates are forced to withdraw from the race. This leaves Stéphane and Corinne Douanier, who battle it out on a debate televised live to all of France.
Stéphane performs really poorly at the debate, with his team leaving no stone unturned to further up his chances of winning. Lamine is on the run after Éric and Désiré make him a target of their setup.
Marion is over Stéphane’s obsession with politics over time and attention to his family and the fertility problem. Meanwhile, Crozon’s real identity is exposed to Stéphane, who witnesses the biggest miracle after the election results come out.
Performances
While there’s little in terms of acting standouts, Jean-Pascal Zadi is a blast to watch as his goofy antiques lend so much of the hilarity in the series.
Positives
Represent is a riot of laughter, especially towards the end when things reach the boiling point for Stéphane. It’s also the little one-liners or replies said under breath that hit the hardest.
Along with the gaffs, Represent is also pointedly satirical throughout its runtime, but a lot of stuff falls short by quite a lot, especially when dealing with progressive identity politics.
However, the protagonists of the series are working for the working class and the disenfranchised, and despite all their incompetence, Stéphane and his team are active forces for good, especially for the underprivileged at the grass root levels of society.
Negatives
The more serious moments in Represent aren’t nearly as effective as the funny ones. There’s also the storyline of William, which feels like a loose thread of how ineffective its resolution is.
The underrepresented players like Yasmine could have been given a bigger screen time to play the “straight man” bit.
Verdict
Represent is a roller coaster ride that has far more ups than downs and despite a couple of hitches down the track, it’s a journey mostly rife with hilarious bits and gags.
While no masterpiece of political comedy, the viewers will be happy to see some socially and politically resonating issues being talked about and represented on the screen.
Represent
Director: François Uzan, Jean-Pascal Zadi
Date Created: 2023-01-21 13:30
3
Also Read: Represent ending explained: Does Stéphane become the president?