Tuesday, May 3, 2022

(TV SERIES) The 7 Lives of Lea (Les 7 vies de Léa) - A Nice Mystery Series Combined with Time Travel and Body Swap

While searching for short series that I could complete fast, I came across this new French series that was just released on Netflix few days ago. It had a very interesting premise that raised my curiosity. OK I'll just get right to it now.

Brief Story Line

Lea (Raïka Hazanavicius), a 17 year old depressed girl accidentally stumbled upon some skeleton remains while wandering by herself. It was later found out that the remains belonged to a person who had disappeared for 30 years named Ismael (Khalil Ben Gharbia). On the following day, to her absolute shock, Lea somehow woke up in the body of Ismael in the year 1991. 

Thinking it was just a nightmare, Lea tried her best to return to herself. In doing so, she found out that Ismael actually befriended with her teenaged mother Karine (Marguerite Thiam) and father Stephane (Théo Fernandez). She also met with their high school friends such as the bully Pye (Alexander Ferrario), the mean girl Sandra (Rebecca Williams) and the record shop owner named Patricia (Anne Azoulay). Lea then decided to find out what actually happened to Ismael and tried to prevent his death, despite the objection and disbelief from her best friend Romane (Maïra Schmitt).

So what actually happened to Ismael? And what would happen to Lea? You can find them all in this truly interesting series.

End of Brief Story Line

It has been quite a while since I felt captivated in a series. This one started off with the introduction of the lead character Lea which did not take long till the interesting part where she stumbled across the body. However, not until she woke up in the body of Ismael that the story became really fun. Like any other body swap of different gender, we were shown the awkwardness and amusing scenes when the person became self aware of the body. As the story progressed, I became more and more intrigued of how it would conclude. And once I got the end of that 1st episode, I immediately became hooked.

Since I started watching this on Sunday night, I only managed to complete it yesterday. It was having only 7 episodes to cover the whole 7 lives story line. Btw, I noticed during the closing credit that the series was based on the novel titled 7 VIES DE LÉO BELAMI (The 7 Lives of Leo Belami) written by Natael Trapp. The whole episodes were directed by Julien Despaux and Emilie Noblet with duration between 41 to 52 minutes (the longest one was the final episode). The series itself was created by Charlotte Sanson.

In each episode, we get to see and better understand on all the persons in Ismael and Lea's lives in different time period. What I liked about the series was how they managed to keep us curious on the mystery and made us became more attached with all the characters. Every episode was always fun to see with Lea having to struggle to achieve her goal of saving Ismael and in the process, grew really closed to him. Even though the dialogues were in French which I did not understand a bit, but it did not became a real obstacle for me to enjoy the series, especially since I have become accustomed watching various other series/movies in different languages, thanks to Netflix.

Another factor that I liked of this series was the 90s pop culture references like the songs heard in the background, the famous movie and the fashion style. Although the main song was really not to my taste (even my wife who heard this song while I was watching, complained about it). The scenery of the small city they lived in was also very beautiful. Of all the 7 episodes, my favorites were the 1st and definitely the final episode. It has an ending that I really liked which felt perfect for me personally. Though some people might prefer to have a different ending and hoping for a second season, I myself did not feel there was a need for it.

Overall this is definitely a series worthwhile to spend your time to watch, especially with only 7 episodes (less than 5 hours binge watching). If you like series with some mystery, time travel and body swap plus teenagers struggles in love and life, then I think you are going to enjoy this, just like I did.

Happy watching!

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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