A Very Ordinary World flags right from the start that things aren’t entirely ‘ordinary’, though you could easily miss it. A young man, talking about his family, and the fact that his father used to teach Latin, but gave it up when he was born to take on full-time parenting duties. Not that unusual?
Ah, but young Romain (a perfectly cast Jérémy Gillet) lives in an alternative world where women hold all the power. Rebelling against the way his society works – the role he’s been forced into, his lack of power – he has decided to become a porn star. He wants to shock the world. “Most people find porn intolerable, it freaks them out,” he says, as the first episode unfolds. ”…it’s the idiocy that I want to shake up. I don’t do it to piss off my parents, I do it to piss off everybody.”
Mixed feelings: Romain sees the result of his first adult film role. Credit: Magneto / Canal+
Romain’s story is, in some part, the director's story too. Born Éloïse Delsart, her first foray into filmmaking was as an actress in a series of porn films under the pseudonym Ovidie, a name that would stay with her as she moved to the other side of the camera, first writing and directing her own adult movies, then turning to documentary work. “This series is based on a true story. It is neither autobiographical nor completely fictional – rather, it’s the expression of a self-defined standpoint,” says the French actress, writer and director, who holds a PhD in humanities and film studies and focusses on sexuality and feminism in many of her works (one of her documentaries, Pornocracy, which looks at how technology has changed the adult film industry, is also streaming ).
"Like Romain, I had a normal childhood in an ordinary family, with schoolteacher parents. I spent my teenage years in the middle-class suburban France of the 1990s, before getting into activism and joining various anarchist groups. And, like Romain, I was attracted to what I perceived as the borderline experience of pornography. Although I’d seen it as a possible means of rebellion, I found it to be a relatively ordinary world, with norms, stereotypes and even forms of violence. But I also met some endearing characters and had some outlandish experiences.
“Any comparison with Romain stops there; the rest is pure fiction. Our starting points may be similar, but our stories aren’t. I am not Romain, and Romain isn’t me.”
But her knowledge of the industry makes young Romain’s experiences feel very real – and it was, she says, very handy to be able to “send someone else to the front line” to explore the themes threaded through the series.
Romain gets some advice on set from fellow actor Dylan (Pablo Cobo).
“This role reversal serves its purpose for the duration of an episode, but its longer-term usefulness could be called into question because a whole series cannot be based on that single principle once the initial shock reaction subsides. Nonetheless, I decided to maintain it throughout – not as the only narrative principle but as a means of bringing this autobiographical fiction into existence. Essentially because it’s extremely convenient to send someone else to the front line – especially someone of the opposite sex! That process, which meant casting a young man in this case, allowed me far greater freedom. Immersing myself in that dystopian world was a means of playing with reality, drawing inspiration from it without adhering to it too strictly.
“The action begins on a shoot like so many others, with no violence, cocaine, sequins, exuberance, parties or tears – just a terrifying banality. A crew of female technicians, a director who used to make corporate films, and an inept production manager have come to do their job. So, the story begins on a perfectly ordinary day, with terribly ordinary people. That’s what makes the porn world interesting: it’s both more ordinary and more disappointing than we imagine. And we often forget to mention that a career in porn is also an epic, and even comic, experience – comic because it’s out of step with the real world, and because of its often-makeshift nature and extravagant situations.
“Although the genders are reversed here, the characters remain true to life – there is no need to exaggerate. The series is an opportunity to show a very different facet of the porn star, a far cry from the usual clichés: empty-headed, victim, tart-with-a-heart, etc. In order to avoid the usual facile depictions, especially when it comes to porn, the series never descends into caricature. The idea is to do make these people relatable, rather than give viewers the impression they’re visiting a human zoo.”
Isaure (Raïka Hazanavicius) has been Romain's friend for years. Credit: Magneto / Canal+
Alongside young Romain, the story introduces us to the people in his life, inside and outside the adult film world. There’s Isaure (Raïka Hazanavicius), Romain's best friend, who also has rebellious ideals, but approaches them very differently, and disapproves of his choice; Linda (Agathe Bonitzer), Romain's self-absorbed, possessive older girlfriend; Andrée (Sophie-Marie Larrouy), Romain's first on-screen partner, a woman who's been working in the industry for over a decade and is facing a waning popularity; Valery (Andréa Bescond), the woman organising his shoots; Dominique (Romane Bohringer), the cynical director of his films; and Romeo (Arthur Dupont) a former porn star who's been forced by life changes to make an unwilling comeback.
Arthur Dupont as Romeo, a former star making a comeback but hoping to get out of the industry for good. Credit: Magneto / Canal+
The series rests heavily on the shoulders of Jérémy Gillet as Romain (aka 'Buck Love', the screen name Romain adopts before his first film), but it's a weight he seems perfectly suited to carrying.
"I discovered Jérémy in his role as a non-binary teenager in Mytho (Arte, 2019). I though his gender fluidity was perfectly suited to the main character in my dystopian world of porn where gender relationships are reversed. What’s more, Jérémy is a highly sensitive, timeless actor – almost quaint, like an actor from the French Nouvelle-Vague of the 1960s,” says Ovidie. “I knew he could play the character I’d imagined, a stranger to the world around him. I wanted Jérémy to embody that sense of strangeness, of a flower among the weeds, a UFO, of delicacy and restraint in a film context that could so easily descend into vulgarity.”
Jérémy Gillet as Romain. Credit: Magneto / Canal+
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A Very Ordinary World - season 1 episode 1
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