Canal+
The doctors at Raymond-Poincaré hospital will still have to make difficult choices in the 3rd season of “Hippocrates”.
TV SERIES – Hippocrates is back for a third season on Canal+, also available in streaming since Monday November 11. The series by Thomas Lilti with Alice Belaïdi, Bouli Lanners and Louise Bourgouin on the hospital world always strives to best reflect the lives of caregivers as well as the socio-economic issues they encounter. In this season 3, the atmosphere is even more tense.
After the quarantine of the main doctors due to a virus, and the flooding of the Emergency Department, we wondered what starting point the director of First Year was going to find this new season. The answer is provided to viewers from the first minutes. They feature Alyson (Alice Belaïdi) in a high-tension scene, culminating in an SOS Médecin strike, in the middle of the summer period.
If Thomas Lilti attaches himself to “erase artificiality” of these triggering events, as he clarified during the press conference at which HuffPost attended on October 9, it is to better address the fundamental problems of the hospital environment. This new wave of six episodes is no exception to the rule and the reunion of Raymond-Poincaré staff is on the theme of “resistance medicine”that is to say that provided outside hospital procedures.
Chloé (Louise Bourguin), still handicapped by her arm, is the first to undertake the practice, by secretly setting up a dispensary for the homeless in the boarding school. Alyson and Hugo (Zacharie Chasseriaud), who have become accomplished doctors, come to support the hospital after the SOS Médecins strike. The three friends can count on the help of Arben (Karim Leklou), finally regularized and unofficial right arm of the head of department, Dr. Brun (Bouli Lanners) who is caught between his hierarchical position at the hospital and his desire to do the best for patients.
They gradually take over an old condemned wing of the building, each in turn asking themselves the same question, essential for the director, “should we respect a dysfunctional institution at all costs or set up a parallel system of medical disobedience? “. Although he readily admits not having an answer to give, Thomas Lilti above all wants “stand up for caregivers” through his own experience as a former doctor.
A heart-pounding story
This third season has six episodes, two fewer than the previous ones. If he confides that it is above all the writing which dictated this choice, Thomas Lilti concedes a recent desire “to move quickly to draw people into an energy and engaging action”. A desire that he combines with a more nervous staging, highlighting the permanent anxiety in which the nursing staff are plunged.
Situations which coincide with the daily lives of the French according to Alice Belaïdi: “The stress of caregivers is increasing, but this reflects a society that is increasingly on edge due to a lack of financial or human resources.”
Canal +
The “California” hospital will be the new scene of hospital tension this season.
“Thomas Lilti’s strength also lies in his writing, where he knows how to move from a dramatic scene to moments of life, which allows for breathing space” explains Karim Leklou. Listening to his actors, he questions them about the evolution of the characters and, moreover, “he knows how to make a shoot enjoyable, we laugh a lot together” supports Zacharie Chasseriaud.
This is evidenced by the successful integration of William Lebghil in the role of David, an ophthalmologist in the private sector and companion of Alyson. This figure of “Candide” gets caught up in the frantic pace of the public, while adding a touch of lucidity about the dysfunctional conditions of the hospital. However, there is no question of confining it to a simple humorous endorsement: “immersing a private doctor in the world of public hospitals also shows that medical commitment is everywhere, even with different codes” assures Thomas Lilti.
Documentation “experience”
The former doctor knows this all the more because everything that is told in Hippocrateshe has it “experienced, observed or heard” since he was 18 and his first year of medicine. Back in the hospital during COVID, he suffered “the violence of the service and the despair of the caregivers”. An experience that the director had already put to good use in his films, including Hippocrates (2014) to which he also allows himself to refer by inviting Vincent Lacoste for a cameo in season 3. And if he admits to having “always had the temptation to delegate” his series, the former doctor knows that it is mainly thanks to his personal journey that it seems so right.
Thomas Lilti has been using his camera to defend caregivers since the start of his career as a director.
A feeling confirmed by the actors who all say they are very attached to him and to “the power” emerging from his work on Hippocrates, which really made them aware of the condition of caregivers. Bouli Lanners thus began to sponsor university hospitals while Karim Leklou revealed that he really became aware of the political dimension of the lack of resources in public services after filming the second season.
Since then, they all have an anecdote with a caregiver to tell, whether in their personal life or with Séverine, the nurse who advises them on set. Enough to make the actors want to get back on track for a 4th season that the director would not mind filming.
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