Experts in Desperation

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Adèle Charki (Manon Bresch) lives in a perpetual need to stay one step ahead of consequences. Her curse is that she’s so good at succeeding that she’s doomed to keep doing it. At the outset of the latest HBO Max French drama “Privileges,” that skill has served her well through her time spent in prison. When she lands a work placement at a prestigious Parisian hotel, keeping that job quickly becomes a matter of life and death. 

Maybe that urgency is what Citadel general manager Édouard Galzain (Melvil Poupaud) recognizes in Adèle when she starts popping up in the affairs of some of the hotel’s upper crust clientele. Her initial tenure is rocky, marked by an equal amount of well-timed saves and high-profile missteps. But before long, Édouard recognizes Adèle’s upside and guides her up the company ladder. With a massive, company-altering wedding just beyond the horizon, the two grow to realize that they each have the power to make or break each other.  

Adèle and Édouard are linked in other ways beyond their shared workplace. If Adèle is trapped, both in her obligations to her new employers and in the small cell she returns to every night, then Édouard certainly is, too. He can’t face a day working on the hotel grounds without some powdery assistance. His job is being threatened by a power struggle within the family that owns The Citadel. The one way he can assert some control over his professional domain is to harness Adèle as an asset, to be his eyes and ears among the hotel support staff and inside the rooms where she can move more freely.

This behind-the-scenes team-up becomes the show’s main engine. When problems of varying sizes pop up (ranging from “how do I get someone an exotic pet for the week” to “how do I make sure that someone doesn’t murder me the second I step off the property”), their powers combined lead to a series of complicated bartering and backstabbing. Adèle becomes a quick expert in doing her own version of trading a paper clip for a house, only with some severe threats of physical violence along the way. Over time, The Citadel becomes a metaphor for an upper tier of society loaded with zero-sum interactions. 

Rube Goldberg television like this, tracking someone as they continually mortgage their tomorrows to solve the problems of today, can be exhausting. The difference between exhilarating and tedious storytelling lies in how well a show uses that premise to its advantage. Unless your main character happens to be diffusing bombs with coat hangers and sticks of gum, there’s a limit to how many times you can watch a main character squirm their way out of danger to survive another day. The best shows not only wring tension out of watching someone walk that tightrope, they look at how that balancing act can fundamentally change the person who somehow manages to reach the other side. To throw yet another metaphor at this idea, some of our greatest TV stories have focused on people who are forced to take leap of faith after leap of faith. What happens when someone manages to, time after time, avoid falling to the bottom of the canyon? (Or, in this case, le canyon?)

Over the course of this season of “Privileges,” we see Adèle become the pure embodiment of “fake it ’til you make it.” She follows the basic Citadel dress code, but that’s about where her adherence to workplace rules ends. Guests, entourage members, and hotel staffers gravitate to her because she’s willing to approach the position in ways entirely absent from the employee handbook. Perhaps it’s that desperation that makes her desirable. It could be jealousy from her perceived peers, but whatever the reason, some people in strategic places in the Citadel hierarchy see her as a convenient scapegoat should their own machinations get foiled.

To its credit, “Privileges” isn’t afraid to let Adèle and Édouard fail. We see them hit dead ends, faces plastered with instant regret or the certainty that their luck has run out. The reprieves they get are always poisoned, attached with the expectation to repay a physical or psychological debt to who(or what)ever might be sparing them. The accumulation of those implied favors, ready to be called in at any moment, blankets “Privileges” in a thick layer of simmering danger. Even at home, in bed, off the clock, there’s the potential for consequences to visit them at any moment. It sharpens both the characters and the show surrounding them. 

As far as stories about French hotel staffers go, “Privileges” is a thriller on par with “Full Time.” That 2021 film stars Laure Calamy as Julie, a midlevel housekeeping manager at an establishment similar to the Citadel. Instead of going through elaborate schemes to stay employed at the hotel, Julie’s attempts to sneak off during the day to interview for a white-collar job closer to her home become a nail-biting race against time. “Privileges” creators/writers/directors Vladimir de Fontenay and Marie Monge get the same kind of energy fueling the white-knuckle moments of this show, whipping through hallways and around corners, tracking Adèle and Édouard as they scheme and panic on the move. There are intimidating single-room conversations and confrontations that end up with the two of them getting what they want, but there are also vehicle chases and living room standoffs that add to the prospect that the main characters could falter at any moment. 

In some ways, “Privileges” is a minor corrective for the glut of fictional tales (and the non-fictional, for that matter) of the lavishly wealthy, ones that are often uninterested in showing how a litany of unseen workers helps to make those fantastical lives possible. In those stories, riches are a vulnerability because they plant a target on the back for those who would seek to share in that privilege. Here, “Privileges” shows how a big bank account can be dangerous in a different way. The guests at The Citadel are inured to the outside world, floating through a perpetual state of malaise where the gift of a watch that’s the price of an average earner’s salary can be seen as an empty, unwanted gesture. Adèle becomes a valued employee because, to them, she offers the one thing they can’t buy: authenticity. 

As we track these two people’s personal and professional relationships, “Privileges” also raises the idea that empathy is a needed, effective tools for survival, even if it’s treated as a means to an end. Anticipating the needs of a client is one of the Citadel’s most valued currencies. (To quote another great hotel show, “the guest gets what the guest wants.”) Adèle’s cup begins to overflow when she convinces a string of guests to confide in her or even be a trusted member of their inner circle. 

This part gives Bresch the chance to play someone whose job is a variation on being an actress. Adèle preps in front of a mirror, effectively remembering her lines. She pauses before entering a scene to get in character. When the action starts, she’s an incredible improviser, not only “yes and”-ing the needs of The Citadel’s highest rollers, but pivoting to some quick-thinking alternatives when it’s clear her livelihood is on the line. And once her part is done for the day, there’s a visible emotional weight being either shouldered or shed. Bresch is especially adept at showing the way that Adèle turns on and off, depending on the situation. She isn’t a mere magic maker or crime robot. The energy being expended all shows up on screen at precise moments. 

That energy is also bolstered by de Fontenay and Monge getting the most out of the environment as they can. The Citadel is a place of understood luxury, where the opulence isn’t in large, ornate decoration but the status of the people staying there. With that as the baseline, it makes a big difference whether or not Édouard is calmly strolling through the lobby or frantically stress-jogging through the service corridors. “Privileges” is all about composure. The desperation doesn’t extend to the people telling the story, even up through a finale that could easily unravel in less capable hands. 

It certainly helps to have musical elements that can also get those ideas across. It starts with the opening credits theme, a seven-note melody from composer Amine Bouhafa that you’ll need heavy machinery to extract from your subconscious. And it extends through the series, including an end-of-episode Daft Punk needle drop that’ll have you feeling like you’re floating on air. Both cases are “Privileges” harnessing the power of a sturdy synth arpeggio. Just like the tension in the show around it, it’s ever-present and you can recognize when the pattern shifts. The important part is that it’s always moving things forward. 

“Privileges” Season 1 is available to stream on HBO Max.