Even the most dedicated of watchers falls prey to the curse and triumph of our times: the smartphone. Even while watching shows I like, I gravitate to my phone like I might miss that extra jolt of dopamine that comes from watching a puppy nose shovel snow for the first time. I have to check basketball scores I checked ten minutes earlier for games I’m not watching. I have to check the NYT to make sure Trump is still going to be the nominee. There’s a few ways to combat this; self-control is probably the most obvious. But if you’re short on that, watching something in a foreign language is a great way to stay focused. You literally cannot split your attention between screens when people are speaking rapidly in another language. So today I give you my two favorite new-ish shows in a foreign tongue:
Escort Boys (Amazon): The title of this show is extremely descriptive, but it lack the poetry the rest of the show displays. Perhaps it, like many things, sounds better in French. The show is set in Camargue, a part of France known for wild horses, flamingoes, and rural beauty. At the center of the story is a family that runs a dying honey farm. The inciting incident is the death of the family patriarch while out tending the bees. He leaves a 17-year old daughter, two adult sons, and a mountain of debt. The older son, Ben (Guillaume Labbé) has been in Paris trying to make it as an actor but mostly being asked to take his clothes off during auditions. He returns for the funeral and to take up the mantle of patriarch, with decidedly mixed results. The family needs money, as do Ben’s two best friends, Zack (Corentin Fila) and Ludo (Thibaut Evrard). When Ben finds out his younger brother Mathias (Simon Ehrlacher) has been prostituting himself to keep the farm afloat, he decides a little gigolo-ing might not be such a bad way to make money.
This could have been very sleazy, but instead it’s somehow incredibly endearing. It is a show with a lot to say about sex, loneliness, intimacy, relationships, gender politics, and men’s emotions. Each of the men have their own reasons for being drawn to this new venture; Ludo is unhappy in his marriage and feels like a schlubby failure; Zack just wants to have a lot of sex, mostly, but also wants to prove to his parents he can be more than a waste of space; Mathias needs to support his father’s other family; Ben is heartbroken and directionless. Their sister Charly (Marysole Fertard) resolutely appoints herself the brains of the operation (even though she’s only 17) and hijinks ensue. It’s very funny and very heartfelt, like the best of Magic Mike (which everyone seems to forget started as a Steven Soderbergh film, and thus also had a lot to say about the above). It’s raunchy but never feels exploitative or gross; instead it just feels like a frank discussion of sex we are always long overdue for.
Watch if you like Magic Mike, romance novels, or the sexualization of honey.
Zorro (Amazon): Zorro is a horse of another color. It is not sweet, per se, and has no interest in deep original conversations about men’s emotional life. It is here for straight up piratical fun, and for that, I love it. Very few comic book-y hero properties have managed to escape the gloomy gritty reimagining engine. Batman never stood a chance; even a hero so comically named as Ant Man is nowhere near fun anymore. But Zorro has stayed silly, God bless him. The 1998 movie The Mask of Zorro with Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Anthony Hopkins is, to me, a triumph of silly adventure. The Legend of Zorro (2005) is also very silly. We very seriously do not make them like this anymore; we want our heroes tortured and surrounded by in-universe Easter eggs. But Zorro goes back to the flavor of the western swashbuckling originals. There have been Zorro movies since there were movies at all. He did well in the silent era, all swords and capes and sly glances at fair maidens. And he does well here, with a dead father to avenge, hidden passageways, sassy maidens with the contouring of Instagram models, CGI foxes who are actually gods, and lots of whips. This is not a good show; it will leak out of your brain within an hour of watching it. But it is a fun show that wouldn’t dare take itself seriously, and we need room for those too.
Watch if you miss Antonio Banderas and his excellent comedic timing or liked Guzman (Miguel Bernardeau) from Elite.