“La Casa de Papel” is the perfect example of confinement to a scenario that goes awry

• The heroes of La Casa de Papel, whose season 4 is available on Netflix, are voluntary prisoners.
• Many scenarios use the closed door motif to build their plots.
• Two screenwriters explain to us how confinement is useful for building interesting characters.

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Caught in their own trap. The voluntary prisoners of La Casa de Papel are in dirty sheets as it goes online this Friday,
season 4 from the Netflix series. For the record, the big-hearted robbers this time tackled the
Bank of Spain, in the hope of having one of them released. Mission accomplished: Rio was returned to them. But in the meantime, the police, and especially the evil Alicia Sierra, have tightened their grip and, with Nairobi wounded by gunshot and
Professor wounded in the heart, Tokyo and its gang seem trapped like rats.

Season 4 therefore promises to be explosive and hopeless. Less calm overall first three parts who were embroidering a screenplay around the motif of the camera. Several closed doors to tell the truth. There was the robbery site, with hostages. That of the house where, in a flashback, we discover the robbers preparing their breakage by following the teacher’s lessons. And, to a lesser extent, the closed door of the police tent.

A constraint as a starting point

Whilemuch of the country is confined, the scenario of La casa de Papel is rich in lessons on how a closed session can turn tragic. For screenwriters, however, the motive behind closed doors is
great playground. Of Twelve angry men, in the deliberation room of a popular jury, at 8 Women, feminine variation of 10 little Negroes, Passing by Funny games, Panic Room or The girl and death, the cinema has often used the closed door motif. In the playoffs, it’s
a little more rare – let’s quote Serving, recently released on Apple TV + and Oz or Lost for the nostalgic – but still as effective.

“In camera is a constraint. And constraint can feed creativity. It’s often a starting point to start imagining stories, ”says Antonin Martin-Hilbert, screenwriter for
many French series of which, lately, Criminal,
on Netflix. “Writing a screenplay necessarily involves constraints at some point. A time constraint to start, depending on the format. The other essential limit that we quickly set when writing a script is the number of characters. There may also be budgetary, decor, seasonal constraints… ”

All locked up

For Marine Francou, screenwriter for A French village and writing director of Gears, behind closed doors is, in a way, the materialization of an enclosure that each character carries within him. “Any series deals with confinement in the psychological sense, at least the very good series. ” To return to La Casa de Papel, you could say that each of the robbers carries within him the bars of his own prison. Rio frees it a little. Nairobi plunges even more, etc.

“This is what makes the difference, in my opinion, between a good entertainment series and masterpieces, in which the characters seem trapped in their neuroses,” explains Marine Francou. This is the case in Mad Men, in Succession… Throughout the seasons, the characters always come up against the same neuroses. There are different tests, which often crescendo, but always the same confinement. And when the character finally manages to verbalize his neurosis, he leaves. And that’s often the end of the series. For example the last 20 minutes of Mad Men. “

The Casa of Real Life

In the case of La Casa de Papel, so we have a slew of characters “locked up” in their neuroses (cuckoo knock-knock Tokyo) locked up for good together. Obviously, it’s explosive. “The camera is interesting because it limits the number of interactions between characters. We must therefore push them to their limits, dig into situations, scenes, rather than multiply them. It can lead the writers to complexify and deepen their characters. “

Caricatured as they are sometimes, the characters of La Casa de Papel affect us in their way of struggling with others and with themselves. “In writing, a character must be locked up to be interesting,” analyzes Marine Francou. It’s a big dramatic issue because it blocks them in their relationships with others. And because that’s how it happens in real life: the chances of freeing ourselves from our neuroses are quite low, even if we happen to progress… Of course, in fiction, it has to be more salient. “