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Marleau is called to a small town to investigate an apparent homicide on a river ferry. The community was already in an uproar over a project to build a bridge, which would kill the ferry and rob local businesses of tourists. The victim is Sophie Lachaud, innkeeper and leader of the anti-bridge forces; she died after being pushed off the ferry’s bridge onto the deck below.
Marleau looks at Sophie’s sister Vickie, then at escaped convict Argann, Sophie’s ex the ferry pilot, and wealthy Manuel, the bridge contractor. Throw in a midnight graffiti poet and some sibling rivalry, and it's a mystery only Marleau can untangle.
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| Elodie (Speedy the Gendarme from “La 7eme Danse”) is back, again played by Aurélie Verillon. |
MISC
Nine d’Urso recently starred as George Sand in La Rebelle on France 2.
Anthony Delon looks just like his dad, Alain Delon. He’s done mostly TV work over the last 20 years, recently Meurtres au Mont Saint-Michel.
Brageac (or maybe Brajax) is a made-up place. Filming locations were in the Seine-Maritime department. The ferry crossing is between the towns of Jumièges and Heurteauville, on the lower Seine 40 miles east of Le Havre. Other river locations were in nearby Duclair and La Bouille.
This was probably the most difficult Marleau episode that I’ve worked on so far.
NOTES
The dedication: Yves Langlois died in 2024, he was Capitaine Marleau’s film editor.
0’27”: There are 12 regions in France, not including overseas territories. Regions are analogous to US states, they are made up of departments, which are analogous to US counties.
This is why you don’t trust machine translation: Bac (1’02”) usually means ‘Baccalaureat,’ which is sort of the SAT of France. But in this story bac means ‘ferry.’ It’s a rather important distinction.
In response to a daytripper whining about detouring 35 km, Mick talks about the bridge (9’54”) as though it’s a pop-up: il va bientôt construire un pont là, ‘there’s going to be work on a bridge soon, here.’ He must mean a construction zone for the bridge. But that’s the line.
Marcel Guillaume (10’17”) was a senior police investigator in Paris until he retired in 1937; he is recognized for being the inspiration for Maigret. I don’t know why Marleau mentions him; Marcel Danguillaume, a racing cyclist in the 1950s and 60s, might have been more apropos.
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| Marleau is vexed when Elodie makes her the star of the post’s open house. |
15’29”: Marleau sings a variation on Je ne suis pas bien portant (I’m not in good health), a childrens’ song:
The original goes: J′ai la rate, Qui s′dilate (I have a spleen that expands). It’s the first in a long list of complaints about different body parts.
Marleau’s version is: La rate quitte le navire, La rate se dilate (The rat leaves the ship, the rat expands. There are two jokes here: 1) rate means ‘rat’ and is pronounced the same; 2) the French word for spleen is also rate.
16’11”: Speedy mentions the time Marleau avez joué Testament là et que le public était debout (played Testament and the public was on its feet), and it seems problematic. 1) I’m not sure the word is Testament; it also sounds like des demons and Desdemona. I’m putting ‘went onstage.’ 2) It must be a reference to the episode “Follies,” but Speedy wasn’t in that (that was Gendarme Melissa, played by Sasha Hekimian).
Quand la légende est plus belle que la réalité, imprimez la légende (When the legend is better than reality, print the legend) nearly gets right a line from the end of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I’ve put the actual quote from the movie.
The gendarme (played by Estelle Desydol) who reports a witness’s statement is just called ‘Gendarme’ in the credits. Later (67’20”) we find out her name is… Estelle.
Marleau gets stuck on the subject of winemaking (18’50”) because cave (cellar/basement) is also the name for winetasting rooms. Drive around wine country, Bourgogne for instance, and there are Cave signs everywhere.
Marleau is trying to sing the chorus of O Toulouse by Claude Nougaro (22’54”), but the phrase J’habite a Toulouse (I live in Toulouse) is not actually in the song.
Mick speaks really fast here (29’17”), but I can make out the words outil tu recontes, which I think is roughly ‘storytelling tool/instrument.’
A navette (30’05”) is usually ‘shuttle,’ but it can also mean ‘shuttlebus.’ Hence I can translate it as ‘ferry’ because a ferry is a shuttlebus on the waves.
Bapaume, Maubeuge, Cuincy, and Loos (31’16”) are indeed all towns with prisons.
Verlan alert (31’35”): scred is ‘discreet.’
Marguerite Yourcenar (33’41” c.f.) is the pen name of essayist/novelist Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour (1903-1987). Her works translated to English include Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), a historical novel about the Roman emperor.
On a small movie title riff (34’01”), Marleau mentions Sauvez Willy (“Saving Willy”), the name of Free Willy in France. So I’ve translated it as the latter.
‘It was nice of you to come to my place’ (39’24”) just sounds too stilted in this case, so I changed it to ‘to stop by.’
Tranquilou-bilou (44’56”) again. I don’t know what a bilou is; a biloute is ‘friend’ or ‘northerner.’
47’21”: Felix spews a lot of words when he could’ve just said ‘It would be the Titanic.’
Bouffer tout cru, literally ‘eat everything raw,’ means ‘eaten alive.’
Averell Dalton (50’41”), one of the four cartoon Dalton brothers, is the most sensitive one, but also the dumbest and greediest.
Josina (52’43”) may be a reference to Josina Machel, a Mozambican human rights activist.
The joke about Qui a gout boire/ou aboiera I think is simply that the two phrases rhyme. Marleau says Qui a gout boire as though it’s a well-known saying, but I can’t find it.
54’11”: I think Marleau is making a joke (a very dry one) about two-tiered justice, to the effect of: ‘this is what a nativist would say.’
55’06”: I assume the Gendarmerie sells/distributes promotional calendars.
Nouveau riche– hey, same as in English.
So, we’ve encountered kenavo (Breton for ‘goodbye) before, in “Á contre-courant.” This time (55’49”) it’s Couriac using kenavo to greet Marleau. I found a Reddit thread that says if you use kenavo as hello in Brittany you could be mistaken for a Parisian. So that must be the joke. After all, Boniface’s clue was that Couriac is from somewhere else.
J’ai pas la carte, ‘I don't have the card’ (57’00”), has several meanings, including ‘I don’t have an ID/password,’ ‘I can't afford it,’ and ‘I'm not on the list.’ But a new one I've discovered, and which complements the next line, is ‘I’m not part of the inner circle.’
Un petite pause (58’28”) means ‘a quick break,’ I’ve translated it as the more American ‘quick sidebar.’
After questioning Couriac, Marleau jokes to herself, Gentil n’a qu’un oeil, ‘Nice has only one eye’ (59’21”), which means ‘I shut one eye to the bad/I’m too nice/I only see the good in people.’
60’24”: Camembert, the cheese, is slang for ‘shut up.’ It’s a smelly cheese and thus likened to bad breath, the original phrase was ‘close your camembert box.’
PEL (64’04”) is Plan d'Epargne Logement (Home Savings Plan), a program that facilitates saving to purchase a home; interest isn’t taxed and deposits are income tax-free. A portion of the interest is publicly funded.
Diegetic sounds of water are heard during the impromptu reenactment when Elodie falls off the ‘ferry’ (67’31”).
Fakir (71’05”) is an anti-liberal leftist alternative newspaper in Amiens, in the Picardy region. From 2013 to 2016 Fakir was spied on by the domestic intelligence agency DCRI, which became DGSI. The agency’s head Bernard Squarcini was convicted in 2024 (two years of house arrest) of spying on behalf of the luxury goods holding company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. LVMH paid a fine of €10 million to settle the investigations against it.
75’44”: I have no idea what Adele song is being referenced.
Recall that Jeannie Longo (77’25”) is a French cycling champion, who was also namedropped in “L’Amiral.”
The Baader-Meinhof Gang/Group (77’54”) was a notorious West German anti-imperialist/communist terror group, mostly active in the 1970s. In the “Happy New Year” episode of Absolutely Fabulous, Edina let slip that Patsy’s sister Jacqui was part of “the Baader-Meinhof.”
Morganer is slang for ‘bite,’ and morgane means ‘madly in love with.’
Élan can mean ‘impulse’ OR ‘elk.’
For some reason mon oeil!, ‘my eye’ (79’24”), means ‘My foot!’
81’16”: I think Marleau is worried there might still be urine on the pregnancy test.
81’23”: I’m not sure about the Vidal/Vitale thing.
- Vitale is indeed the name of the national health insurance card
- Le Vidal is a venerable French medical reference book; why would Marleau anthropomorphize the book by calling it on the phone?
- Marleau then goes to the pharmacy, so maybe Rosemonde’s surname is Vidal. But there’s no Vidal sign on the pharmacy, no one addresses Rosemonde as Vidal, and her character has no surname in the credits.
- The most likely answer is that Vidal happens to be a real company that deals in pharmaceutical information. It seems to be mainly for the medical profession, but maybe Marleau was calling a help line.
À partir en cacahuète, ‘going peanuts’ (87’31”), means ‘to go downhill/out of control/pear-shaped.’
Copains comme cochons, ‘friends like pigs,’ (90’41”), means ‘thick as thieves.’
Potinière (93’05”) means ‘gossip.’ There are a number of restaurants named La Potinière.
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