After 3615 Moniquegeek drama for those nostalgic for Minitel… rose, OCS is once again playing the 1980s nostalgia card with its new signature series, doggie. A title that obviously refers to the famous credits of the cult show Gym Tonic, launched in 1982 on Antenne 2, where Véronique and Davina met up with Sunday sports enthusiasts for a frenzied aerobics session. Launched this Thursday at 9 p.m. on OCS Max, this series created by Géraldine De Margerie and Maxime Donzel (the duo behind the hilarious short format Tutotal) and produced by Julien Patry, embarks the spectators in the early 1980s, in Blagnac, in the Toulouse region, for an emancipatory aerobics session against a backdrop of espionage.
We follow Karine (Claire Dumas), 40 years old, docile and discreet mother, sees her life turned upside down by the discovery of aerobics. Led by the charismatic Jane (Alexia Barlier), straight from her native Texas, the Thursday evening class becomes a lifeline for Karine and her friends. “Our goal was to tell the story of female emancipation through four destinies, four characters and the irruption of this American, this somewhat unreal character, and to show how this sport was going to have an impact on their lives”, says Maxime Donzel, that 20 minutes met at the Series Mania festival.
And to explain: “We talk a lot about the history of the pioneers, with Karine, our main character, I wanted to talk about those who could not. I was inspired by the work of Yuri Casalino, who worked on a documentary about women who weren’t allowed to go into space, who weren’t allowed to be pilots. I find these stories fascinating and they touch me almost even more deeply than those of the pioneers. »
“The liberation of women through the making of a body”
With aerobics, “we wanted to talk about the arrival of mass Americanization in France. A new double-edged culture. It inspires dreams and brings positive messages of emancipation, but it also encourages individualism and liberalism,” emphasizes Maxime Donzel. “We are in a kind of vacuum embodied by liberal America, we were not in feminism, but in the liberation of women by the manufacture of a body”, adds director Julien Patry. “It’s two guys who are telling you that. Géraldine De Margerie, creator and co-author of Doggie, couldn’t be with us, but it’s obviously a subject that she brought up a lot. We realize the irony of the situation ”, apologizes Maxime Donzel.
“From writing to finalizing, we had very mixed teams, women on camera, on electricity. This created an interesting dynamic on set. We had the impression that what was happening in the series overflowed a little on the set, ”underlines Julien Patry.
“Women shouldn’t sweat”
“In France, the subject of aerobics has often been ridiculed, even if we look at it with affection. We wanted to take this subject seriously. We wanted to be humorous, not by making fun of this sport, but with funny characters”, specifies Maxime Donzel. Same story, on the staging side: “with Christine Guegan, the costume designer, we didn’t want to fall into the disguise side, but to be very precise with the costumes. There, we allow ourselves a little too much, it’s in makeup and hairstyles. »
In her autobiography, Jane Fonda, a figure who popularized this practice, tackles the subject seriously and tells what this sport has changed for her and the women around her. “We see that it tells intimate, strong, liberating things. We didn’t recommend individual sport so much to women before. What Jane Fonda says is that women shouldn’t sweat. The arrival of aerobics signals the resumption of control of their own bodies and their right to sweat”, says Maxime Donzel.
Choreographed aerobics scenes in rooms full of mirrors, not so easy to film. “Initially, nobody knew how to do aerobics. The teacher doesn’t have one. She had to learn in express, like all the other actresses. The more the series progresses, the more the choreographies are elaborated. They had to learn aerobics and then learn to unlearn to play the scenes where they play beginners. Mirrors are complicated. We found things: like objects in the middle that hide the camera. We wanted an aerobics session in each episode, and for the staging to be different each time so as not to tire the viewer, ”explains Julien Patry.
“Many of the plots of the series are inspired by real events”
But behind the smiles, the purple leotards and the tanned bodies hide in doggie a much more complex reality: what if Jane was not the one she claimed? What if she was a little too interested in Project 37, a top secret file that Karine’s husband is working on? “In what I have read on espionage, we realized that we underestimate the importance of industrial espionage, even today compared to geopolitical espionage. Spies are not where you think. James Bond would be a bad spy, we would spot him directly! Among the women spies, there are a lot of housekeepers, people we don’t suspect of being spies because we look down on them. We wanted to seek out the improbable”, comments Maxime Donzel.
The aeronautics arena came from the envy of the Toulouse region. “Everyone in this region works directly or indirectly for this massive and globally important industry,” summarizes Maxime Donzel. It was fascinating to discover the history of the big companies like Airbus or Boeing which went to war. Many of the series’ plots are based on real events. »
“Karine’s anger will echo in this ex-Bond Girl, a little sidelined,” he announces. In the background, the Cold War: “We quickly understand that Jane is no longer in Russian business. She is put on a project that is not up to her abilities. It is still political espionage that is important. In the 1980s, with the detente and then the fall of the wall, spies were recycled into industrial espionage,” recalls Maxime Donzel. Finally, doggie offers aerobics and aeronautics a communion as joyful as it is touching!