A rope in a forest.We pull it, but it does not come.Inevitably, one wonders where she leads and what is at the end.A very simple idea with a striking, scary, oppressive result that brings up deep questions about our humanity and what drives it.This is the main frame of "La Rope", a series imagined by Dominique Rocher, with Jean-Marc Barr, Jeanne Balibar, Suzanne Clément and Tom Mercier in particular.

The idea came from a German novel whose intrigue was located in the middle of the peasants in the 19th century, "Das Seil" by Stefan Aus Dem Siepen.In the novel, the men leave to follow the rope while the women stay in the village to take care of the harvest.From this novel, the director Dominique Rocher keeps the idea of this mysterious rope to make it a more modern mini-series, in three episodes."At the beginning, I arrived with the idea of making a TV movie, as you write, it is the story that we told that led us to this format," explains RTS."La Cord" is a Franco-Belgian Co-PRODUCTION ARTE, the films of the Instant and Versus Production.

A quest for knowledge

Scientists are gathered here in an isolated place in Norway, a place that participates in the atmosphere of the mini-series."We quickly realized that there were very interesting echoes between the quest for these characters who follow an endless rope and the quest for scientists who observe the universe and its infinite.There are questions that resonate and we started wondering if we could not make the two stories resonate, "continues Dominique Rocher.

The director therefore makes it a scientific intrigue, an absolute quest to know.In "La Corde", scientists develop a theory of "repeaters" which would capture certain waves from space and map the darkest corners of the universe.The series plays with the limits of madness, when curiosity turns to obsession, until deadly madness.

>> A voir, la bande-annonce de "La corde":

Melancholy horror

In the series, the rope is a character in its own right."In the way of filming, my bias is a rather minimalist bias which consists in trying to use the camera and the assembly only when it is extremely necessary and serve a form of fantastic horror that interests me, that John-Marc Barr describes as a melancholy horror, "explains the director.

The rope is a metaphor for life that we follow because we cannot do otherwise when we know that it will end badly.Difficult to talk about it without disclosing too much of the plot.But it is perhaps a way for Dominique Rocher to alert on the excesses of our society: "It is even the starting point of the project: this feeling that we are launched in a machine, like the train thatcrosses cities in 'the human beast' of Emile Zola.This feeling that everyone feels today, we wanted to treat it.This is absolutely the subject for us: are we able to question ourselves after having engaged so much effort? ".

Of tale, horror, metaphysical thriller, the mixture of genres is in any case assumed by Dominique Rocher in "the rope".

Interview by Anne-Laure Gannac

Web adaptation: Lara Donnet

^{The three -part series is available on Arte.TV and broadcast on the channel on January 27 at 8:55 p.m..}