“Parallèles”, a French-style “Stranger Things” mixed with Nordic thrillers

The story of four inseparable friends who go through extraordinary adventures. Parallels, presented in world preview at Series Mania this Sunday and available this Wednesday on Disney+, follows Samuel (Thomas Chomel, one of the stars of Clem), his brother, Victor (Maxime Bergeron), his best friend Bilal (Timoté Rigault) and Romane (Victoria Eber), Samuel’s crush.

These teenagers lead a peaceful life in a small mountain town until the day when three of them mysteriously disappear. The teenagers were propelled into parallel universes. Present, future and multiverse mix and merge “The story is complex, but the psychological stakes are clear”, promises Quoc Dang Tran, the creator of the fiction to whom we owe the horror series in particular hailed by Stephen King Marianne.

The band will make every effort to understand what happened and find themselves as before. On the adult side, Lieutenant Retz (Guillaume Labbé) faces an investigation for the first time that puts his scientific mind to the test, while the parents, including Sofia (Naidra Ayadi), a brilliant scientist, move heaven and earth to find their children.

“These researchers want to reproduce the big bang”

It all starts when Quoc Dang Tran settles in a village near Cern (European Organization for Nuclear Research), in the country of Gex at the foot of the Jura mountains, and discovers that under his feet “there is the biggest accelerator of particles in the world which is 27 km in circumference, and that these researchers want to reproduce the big bang, just that! The theory of strings and parallel dimensions stimulates his imagination.

“An affiliation with “Strangers Things””

If the aesthetic leans towards the Nordic thriller and does not play the card of nostalgia for eightiesthe gang of teenagers and the fantastic dimension evoke Stranger Things. “There is a filiation, assumes the creator. I grew up in the 1980s with films by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis and Joe Dante. Parallels treat like the Goonies Where stand-by-me of that moment when one loses the grace of innocence. »

Parallels explores, like these masterpieces of the 1980s “the strength of adolescent friendships”, the transition to adulthood, budding loves, decisive choices, but also parenthood. With Sofia and Bilal, “I wanted to show a harmonious filial relationship between a single mother and her son,” says Quoc Dang Tran. With the parents of Samuel and Victor, the creator plays “on the perfect favorite son with a little brother who finds it difficult to exist alongside, with parents who have a cult of performance”. Romane’s mother, meanwhile, “struggles to make ends meet”.

But above all, the series reminds us that we must tell the people we love that we love them. “Everything is fragile in this life, nothing is certain. The series reminds us that we can lose those we love and stay there wondering “What did I miss? What should I have done?”. SF poses the ” what if” and makes it possible to answer them in an entertaining way”, he concludes.