Meurtres à Arles

Episode:  Meurtres à Arles (Murders in Arles), runtime 1:28:09 Subtitles download link

Arles is a city of 50-55,000 located above the delta where the Rhone flows into the Mediterranean. The region is called the Camargue, and is known for its Roman antiquities, connections to Picasso, Gauguin, and Van Gogh, and the Camargue style of bullfighting in which the bull is not killed.

As the story opens, the annual Herdsmen's Games are underway in the two-millennia-old Arles Amphitheatre. As the new Arles Queen is about to be crowned, a horse drawn carriage enters the arena-- carrying the bloody body of Julien Brunet, businessman and president of the festival organization.

The police immediately spring into action, because Capt. Sarah Cortes (Constance Gay of Face à Face) is in the audience. She calls in her partner and bestie Cmdr. Lucas Pujol (François-David Cardonnel, Hugues on Le Bazar de la Charité), and their snarky lieutenant Marianne (Elodie Poux), and the team is on the case. The suspects: Aline the new Queen; Julien's brother Rémy, a councilman; Isabelle, a sound technician; Aline's father Emile; and maybe Dolores herself. But what about suspects not on the list?

Sarah and Lucas (Constance Gay (L) and François-David Cardonnel) touch base with Marianne (Elodie Poux), who is hilarious.

NOTES

The Arles Amphitheatre (0'11") dates to 90 A.D.

Sarah and her boyfriend Alex are on their way to the capelado (0'49"), the ceremony honoring raseteurs (bullfighters) and gardiens (herdsmen). Capelado comes from an old word meaning hat; notice the hat Alex is wearing.

Frederic Mistral (1'55") was a poet from southern France, and co-winner of the 1904 Nobel Prize for Literature. In the Festo Vierginenco he started, 15-year-old Arlesiennes ('girls of Arles') don the traditional Arles costume as a rite of passage.

Dolores (Julie Sassoust), who is Lucas's sister, introduces
the girls wearing traditional Arlésienne dresses.

The Queen's Ball (6'29") is held every 3 years on the eve of the inauguration of the new Queen and her Maids of Honor-- so, the night before the Herdsmen's Games.

The nameless Forensics guy (4'35") is Alban Casterman, who was Celestin on In Tandem.

A toril (4'52")-- Spanish, not French-- is a holding cell or pen where a bull is kept before entering the bullring.

La Feux de la Saint-Jean, the Fires of St. John (6'29"), are bonfires held in conjunction with the June 24 Feast of St. John, a France-wide holiday

'L'Arlesienne who never comes' (7'58") refers to a short story and 1872 play of that name by Alphonse Daudet, in which a peasant goes mad and kills himself after learning his girlfriend from Arles is unfaithful.  Like Godot, she never actually appears in the play.  The music for the original production was written by Georges Bizet; his L'Arlesienne Suite No. 1 and 2 are very recognizable.

Sarah jokes, 'you didn't really think I was going to keep my legs exposed all day?' (8'29"). Her dress was ankle length!

The line from L'Arlesienne, on the bloodied page read by Sarah (9'47"), is almost the entirety of Scene VII, the finale.

Scene VII of L'Arlesienne. - The Hathi Trust

Aline's father Emile (13'33") is Stephane Blancafort from In Tandem and Candice Renoir.

Sarah asks Lucas to meet her after work at the manade (16'15"), which is a type of farm for semi-wild horses or cows. I'm translating it as 'farm.'

It's the manade because it's her dad's (17'26"). And her dad is Vincent Winterhalter, who was a Gendarme on Meurtres á a lot in the earlier seasons. 

Fanfan (17'18") is an interesting name for Sarah's mom, it's from the Caribbean and means 'baby child.'

Marianne has put up barrages filtrants (24'14") in the search for Aline. It literally means 'filter dams'-- I'm putting 'checkpoints.'

I think Loc (26'30") is probably short for Location Services, technical people for hire who do lights and sound for events. We first glimpse the Provence Loc van at 7'40" and 7'53".

The basis for a possible motive revealed by Dolores (30'02"), a traduction (piece of text to translate) that Aline wasn't supposed to have, was not previously cited in the screenplay. Luckily the exposition here does the explaining.

The Camargue Western expo (31'40") is based on a real exhibit of the same name that was held in 2016. The posters (31'40", 55'09") advertise that the exposition is being held at the Cloister of Saint-Trophime, a historically and artistically significant monument, and UNESCO World Heritage Site. The real expo was at the Eglise des Frères Prêcheurs (Church of the Brothers Preachers).

La Péniche (46'31", 47'10") is a real restaurant on a barge (péniche) on the Rhone. Trinquetaille is the district.

Lucas and Sarah arrive at La Péniche.

I'm leaving as-is petit bourgeois (63'40") because it's a common phrase for English speakers.

Bastide des Alpilles (75'55") means 'Country house of the Little Alps.' The Alpilles is a small mountain range (about 1600 ft at its tallest) about 18 miles long, its western end is about 5 miles northeast of Arles.

The Route de Mausanne (76'07") is a half-mile-long section of the D17 highway that skirts the southern edge of the Alpilles. Oddly, it is not in the town of Mausanne-les-Alpilles, but begins where the highway enters the neighboring town of Mouriès.