Lupin

This is a two season series on Netflix about a “gentleman thief” in Paris, modern day, avenging his father’s death against a wealthy and corrupt Parisian family, the Pellegrinis.  It’s live action, though there was a Japanese animated version awhile ago, using Lupin’s grandson as the main character. 

 In 1995, as a young teenage boy in Paris, Assane Diop befriends a young white boy Benjamin, a blonde girl, Claire, who winds up as his wife and the mother of his son Raoul, and a brunette girl, Juliette, whose father is very rich and powerful.  Assane’s father Babakar, from Senegal, is very intelligent and honest, and works for Juliette’s father Hubert. 

 The Pellegrinis hit a rough patch and Hubert decides to pull a fast one.  They own an incredibly expensive necklace, laden with diamonds, supposedly worn by Napoleon’s wife, Josephine.  Hubert arranges the necklace to be “stolen”, pockets the insurance money, and frames Assane’s father for the crime.  Juliette persuades Babakar to plead guilty, assuring him that his prison sentence will be light, but since the necklace was “never recovered”, Babakar is sent to prison for life.  In prison, he supposedly kills himself, but leaves clues to Assane to suggest he was innocent, and thus his subsequent “suicide” was really murder.  In all of this, a corrupt Parisian cop, Dumont, assists Hubert in making certain the police do not ask any inconvenient questions.    

 As an adult, Assane embarks on a campaign to avenge his father, to reveal the truth, and to see that Hubert receives the justice he deserves.  To do so, he draws inspiration from the Lupin stories, about a fanciful “gentleman thief”, Arsene Lupin (Arsène Lupin - Wikipedia).  Although Lupin himself is fictional, the stories themselves do exist.  Babakar gave him the stories as a young boy.

 Naturally, he catches the attention of the cops, and Dumont attempts to make sure his subordinates chase down Assane and leave Hubert alone.  But one cop, Guedira, ascertains the Lupin angle and starts reading the books as a way of predicting Assane’s next move.  Despite Dumont’s efforts, he begins to unravel the truth and sympathize with Assane. 

While Hubert has no qualms about having various thugs and criminals kill whoever gets in his way – including Babakar – Assane is notable for sharing Lupin’s refusal to kill anyone.  Moreover, often times Assane will eventually return an item he stole, in a sense simply borrowing it.   His friend Benjamin, now an art dealer and fence, is his closest confederate.  For her part, Claire loves Assane but resents his unconventional lifestyle – he comes and goes apparently at random, completely unreliable.

Except for an episode in Le Havre, the port city at the mouth of the Seine on the English Channel, the series takes place in Paris.  The Louvre starts out as the focal point, later we see the Catacombs and Chatelet.  I watched it in French with English subtitles.  For simple stuff and short sentences, I was ahead of the subtitles, but longer, more complex dialogue quickly spoken left me reliant on the subtitles.