TaraDeS — 1 month ago(February 03, 2026 05:48 AM)

The Woman from the Sea 🧜‍️​​ Swim or Die ​
For many its doesn't end well when
"The Woman from the Sea"
gets into their boat at night.
A miniseries with 6 episodes shows Laetitia Casta as a beautiful water creature.
The beautiful and mysterious Théa (Laetitia Casta, left) escaped from police custody.
She follows the young Chloé (Noée Abita, right). (Photo: ARTE France)
This creature, which keeps sneaking onto the island, is otherworldly beautiful, almost naked, dripping wet and extremely eerie. It tilts its head with a smile when it catches a scent, comes close, flares its nostrils to smell even more closely and always keeps its target in sight.
"It's you,"
it says to the girl Chloé, and then the creature pulls her down into the sea. Chloé screams, fights for her life! This isn't the end at all, but rather the beginning of something astonishing, beautiful and terrifying.
Incidentally, things don't end so well for men if the woman from the sea stalks around them or climbs into their boat at night. They end up — at best, after an animalistic act of love — on their backs, eyes staring blankly, like dead fish or as a drowned corpse in a cave on the seabed.
Yah, the doubt occasionally arises while watching the 6-part French ARTE series. Is it simply kitsch or utter nonsense? Especially when the plot takes a somewhat surprising turn towards eco-drama at the end. Then you're like the dim-witted men in the fishing village: No matter what your head tells you, the temptation is
too great and too enticing to resist.
The series creators Gaia Guasti and Aurélien Molas and director Julien Trousselier stage their mystery with a hypnotic soundtrack and beautiful, sweeping images of archaic life on the remote island, of vast expanses of ocean and what lies deep beneath. The suppression of self-determined female sexuality in a patriarchal society is a recurring theme, as is everyone's destructive fear of the unknown.
Interwoven are a few strong and established plot elements, such as the water spirit Melusine, witch hunts and the endangered souls of the sailors. Of course, it's somewhat simplistic when the French actress Laetitia Casta, who has long since ceased to be merely a model but is still celebrated on the covers of fashion magazines, plays a being of dangerously otherworldly beauty. But what can you say? It works.
Surprisingly, this mystery miniseries also tells a coming-of-age story, almost as an aside, and in the most delicate and believable way we've seen it in a long time. The series' protagonist is Chloé (Noée Abita), a dreamy teenager of mysterious origins. Like the other women in the village, she works at the local fish factory, lives in a messy caravan next to her foster parents' house and has a best friend, Sabine.
The future could feel like the ride in the open pickup truck along the lonely coastal road: Sabine turns up the music, pulls her shirt over her head in the wind and squeals with delight. Later at the beach party, a boy from the village harasses Chloé, frightens her and ignores her refusal. What happens next deeply disturbs Chloé and is very bad for the boy. Let's call it a kind of coming-of-age.
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/medien/arte-serie-laetitia-casta-die-frau-aus-dem-meer-1.4748702
January 08, 2020
I've seen 3 episodes so far, means half of the miniseries.
Yah, some scenes are a bit silly, but overall it's pretty good.
Perhaps not really suitable for males.
Une ÎLE (2019) Trailer #1