There is no fraud. Neither spy nor murder, for that matter. What about the mean crooks of Wall Street? No more. Whether Before the crash sets its scene in the middle of finance, it is indeed only a pretext to approach certain faults of our society which are materialism, capitalism, greed and insatiability. For Kim Lévesque-Lizotte, who wrote the series with Éric Bruneau for Radio-Canada, the reality of our world hurts. There are no half measures. “We are either mediocre or excellent. To be loved, recognized or valued in your work, you have to surpass yourself, be the best. It’s like that everywhere,” she points out.
Far from having any moralizing tone, Before the crash, on the contrary, questions our relationship to a system based on ultra performance. “We wanted to make a fiction on the human first and foremost. The stock market and numbers don’t really interest us. What intrigues us rather are individuals and human tensions, the bad sides that lie dormant in us and that all it takes is a spark to stir up,” explains Éric Bruneau, who is writing his first screenplay here. While the “never enough” – of money, likesof followers, of power, of domination — is, at the present time, more relevant than ever, this one in particular wanted to push the reflection from this observation: today, nobody is ever satisfied with anything. “Because I am also concerned, I do not just want to denounce, but to question myself,” he underlines.
The flip side
To do this, the duo imagined the character of Marc-André, whose role Éric Bruneau plays, who was once an investment banker. But while he has been living a sober life for four years, he is offered the opportunity to return to his former firm, where his friends François (Émile Proulx-Cloutier) and Patrick (Mani Soleymanlou) continue to climb the ladder. The last of the band, Vincent (Benoit Drouin-Germain), he converted after suffering a burnout. As for Evelyne (Karine Vanasse), best friend of Marc-André and wife of François, with whom she has just had a child, she alone crystallizes the issue ofBefore the crash.
With her son, at the office, during sex, Evelyne is constantly performing. “Without saying too much, what happens to her on the show is difficult, but she keeps it to herself. She hides the truth from her mother and her husband. She always says that everything is under control, ”says Kim Lévesque-Lizotte. According to her, Evelyne also represents what society expects of a woman, that is to say, to reassure those around her and prove what she is capable of in order not to be reproached and to continue to move forward. “Until it cracks,” she warns.
Kim Lévesque-Lizotte and Éric Bruneau were keen on Before the crash to show that the performance society has real consequences on our relationships with others, our couples, our health and even our children. The proof is with the young Florence (Ireland Côté), who at 13 is already bathed in this kingdom of morbid ambition in which her parents and their friends like to indulge. “If I am neither beautiful nor gifted and therefore I will never find myself a man, I must become rich on my own! Thanks to her lucid and incisive replies, her arrogance, Florence is thus one of the most interesting protagonists of the series to observe. “Children don’t do what they’re told. They do what they see and what adults value. If we value the performance and the equipment, they will go through it too, ”says Kim Lévesque-Lizotte. Éric Bruneau found it wonderful to have a child in Before the crash to demonstrate the absurdity of the time, but is worried. “If we transmit these values to young people, it will hurt. »
While the series doesn’t give a solution or suggest any alternative to the pervasive frenzy, Before the crash succeeds in making us aware of the trap set by every man for himself. “We run, but we end up not knowing what we are running after” finally raises Kim Lévesque-Lizotte.