Suzanne Bien-Aimé, it’s fair to say, is a hot mess.
When we first meet the protagonist of the new French Canadian series Empathy, she tumbles out of bed, disheveled, hungover, wearing a grotty old bra and panties, and stomps barefoot into the remains of a poutine takeout.
Stumbling into her kitchen, she meets her last night’s hookup. After an awkward attempt at sex, in which Suzanne bursts out in tears, she rushes outside in the pouring rain, late for her first day at work. Her car doesn’t start, she gets into a testy fight with her neighbor arriving late and sopping wet to her new job: As a psychiatrist for the criminally insane at Montreal’s Mont-Royal Institute.
“I think you can say she’s a very complex character, and she’s messy, which made her very fun to play,” says Florence Longpré, who wrote Empathy and stars as Suzanne. “We soon find she is recovering from a very big trauma, a depression. I had a similar extreme period of depression in my life when I was young, and I found it cool to play that feeling of experiencing darkness for a long time, and the sense of catharsis when you emerge from it.”
Empathy is another parade performance from Longpré, who dazzled in the 2022 Quebecois series Audrey’s Back, playing a coma patient hospitalized after an accident on prom night, who suddenly wakes up a decade-and-a-half later, still feeling like the high school student she once was. The show, which combines kitchen-sink drama and surrealism, won the Grand Prize at the Canneseries television festival, with critics singling out Longpré’s performance for walking the line between absurd comedy and heartbreaking drama.
She walks a similar line in Empathy. Over the course of the series, which had its world premiere in competition at the Series Mania TV festival on Thursday, we delve into Suzanne’s complex family life and the source of her depression, but the cringe comedy moments keep coming.
“Personally, I find it very more difficult to be funny on screen,” Longpré says. “Expressing trauma is not so difficult, but comedy is more complicated. There’s a lot of rhythm in it, and you have to find the right balance. It’s tricky.”
For her Empathy co-star Thomas Ngijol, who plays care worker Mortimer, Suzanne’s colleague, and eventually friend, at Mont-Royal, the challenge was the reverse. A stand-up comedy star in France, Empathy is his first major dramatic role.
“This was far away from my comfort zone. It was a real challenge for me,” says Ngijol. “Everyone has a dark side, but in my work to date, I’ve been very careful not to show too much of that. So it was cool to do this show. The fact that I could do far from France, in Canada, was a good thing, because here in France, people primarily see me as a comedian.”
Empathy, produced for the Canadian streaming service Crave, is the first-ever Canadian series to compete at Series Mania and is a bit of a showcase for the national industry.
“We are [Canada’s] only bilingual platform, we produce original content in French and in English and we launch our scripted series in both English and French-speaking Canada, which is really unique,” says Suzane Landry, VP of development, content and information at Crave. “We are here to have conversations about co-productions and partnerships, anything to get more eyeballs on our shows.”
Landry sees increasing opportunities for Canadian-European cooperation, not least in the wake of Donald Trump’s election stateside. Conversations at Series Mania, “haven’t been tainted” by Trump’s tariff wars and saber-rattling, says Landry, but she says Crave’s “bilingual, diverse approach” to programming gives it a “natural connection” with European broadcasters.
Longpré and Ngijol, at least, are hoping to extend their on-screen French-Canadian cooperation.
“It was very cool to begin the second part of my career as a drama actor so far from home,” says Ngijol. “I did follow this with a comedy [in France] but I felt really comfortable in the drama here and want to return to it.”
“And I need him back for the second season!” says Longpré, “so fingers crossed.”
Empathy premieres on Crave on April 10.
