A friend from my old church recommended Hotel Beau Sejour to me, and since he is extremely familiar with my tastes, I immediately added it to my queue. When Netflix notified me that the Belgian ten episode series was going to expire on June 1, 2020, it shot to the top and planned to watch an episode each day for lunch until I was finished, which I did for the first four days then gobbled the rest of the series in a single sitting undeterred by the weather, torpor or the general inherent inability to concentrate during a global pandemic. He was right. The series was so good that by the denouement, I almost wanted to rewatch the entire series from the beginning. I did not, but I settled for rewatching and fast forwarding through the majority of the series.
Hotel Beau Sejour is a murder mystery anthology with a twist, and only the first season is available on Netflix. The protagonist is Kato, a teenage girl, who wakes up to discover that she is dead (not a zombie and not like the resurrected in The Revenants) and is frustrated with her attempts to reconnect with the people in her old life and find out who killed her. It is a brilliant counterintuitive present-we will not be following the lead detective, but the murder victim, who is understandably looks for a resolution. Even though there is clearly a lead, it is an anthology series with an ensemble cast with some players more dominant than others, but it is not like most murder mysteries in which everyone is hyper-motivated to solve the murder. Everyone is busier with their personal drama than finding a murderer, and as the series unfolds, we discover that this lack of concern contributed to the protagonist’s death.
I watch a lot of foreign television series and movies, predominantly from Europe, but I think that Hotel Beau Sejour may be my first Belgian encounter. I have an ignorant American question (no offense intended): is Belgium the equivalent of the backwoods of Europe, and instead of banjos, they have motocross and shooting festivals? This series was a slow burn because of the lost in translation moments. After the first few episodes, if I was not a completist, I would have stopped watching the season, but I am so glad that I did not because the overall season is brilliant.
Hotel Beau Sejour posed a major cultural obstacle because I already hate sports, but to then get introduced to sports that I am completely unfamiliar with was especially challenging. I think that the average American who is a Nascar fan or whose favorite Constitutional amendment is the second would take less time to get acclimated than I did. Also these folks were messier than the average European series-illicit drug rings, alcoholism, affairs. You are not going to find the chic, thematic, controlled murderer in this series who is trying to make some Rube Goldbergian point. Is Belgium equal parts German and French because it felt like a mashup of both cultures from an ignorant outsider’s brief glance?
Hotel Beau Sejour effectively combined the murder mystery with the supernatural without straining my suspension of disbelief or making the story drag with a lot of unnecessary exposition. We learn the rules right alongside Kato so we do not get bogged down with details or a random supernatural expert that just happens to be in the neighborhood, a trope that I enjoy, but is unrealistic. I usually hate murder mysteries because there is little character development and by the time that the murder is solved, I am completely checked out because of all the extraneous details and the eleventh hour information provided which feels like a cheat to provide answers instead of a steady build up to a denouement.
I never felt that way about Hotel Beau Sejour. It begins like an HBO series-in the middle of an already unfolding story with multiple characters, which always leaves me feeling lost and discombobulated, but gradually wins my curiosity as I try to untie the Gordian knots of characters relationship to each other, histories and conflicts. I actually still have a few questions because the subtitles were uneven. They did not always appear on screen at the same rhythm as the character talking so it was hard to tell who was saying what. Also if I paused or rewound, they would briefly disappear. Also it felt as if some characters said more than what was translated. There are also a few words that did not make sense when translated. For instance, is spelling ecstasy phonetically a commonly used synonym, i.e. XTC? To be clear, I would never switch to or recommend English dubbed because then you lose the original emotional tone that the actor was trying to convey so do not even think about it. Another sign of a great series is beginning with actively disliking certain characters then gradually warming up to them and vice versa. I found myself sympathetic to characters whose behavior I found utterly appalling. This character was consistently callous until tragedy struck that character.
The best part of Hotel Beau Sejour is that when you get to the ending, it is a great plot twist that still works if you rewatch the entire season. There was one plot twist that I completely saw coming and actually predicted during the first episode so I did not expect that a certain character was the culprit. If you have a good bullshit detector, alarm bells will lightly go off throughout every episode of the series whenever one character was onscreen because I always get frustrated when a single character knows something that different characters do not know, but never shares it with the characters so that everyone can get on the same page. If you are paying attention, the objection to this information changes, but is still plausible each time from the first episode to the last. I am suspicious by nature, but I could see some viewers explaining that this character’s behavior was reasonable given each circumstances, which is why our world is messed up. We make too many excuses for dangerous, unreasonable people and put the burden on the wrong person. Also there are so many gradations of horrible people hiding in plain sight.
I wonder if Hotel Beau Sejour is similar to Twin Peaks, which I never watched (I am not into David Lynch) in the way that the murder of a teenager reveals the flaws of the characters and the village that would otherwise continue without criticism or reflection. Once all the pieces come together, it paints a bleak picture of a rural community that is forced to face its shortcoming because of a restless spirit demanding justice from those who could see her. Even though the majority of the series is depressing, it still manages to end on a redemptive note and find a bittersweet happy ending.
Once the second season of Hotel Beau Sejour is available to watch, I would be happy to watch it. I already know the premise, and it is possible that I will be less invested because of the protagonist, but the first season was so strong that it made an initially regretful viewer such as myself into an ardent fan. I would highly recommend it if you enjoy murder mysteries with a twist and do not object to subtitles.