Chapter 2 (Lupin)

Chapter 2 is the second episode of the first part of the Netflix series Lupin.

Synopsis
Assane hatches a plot to contact Comet, an inmate who steers him to a clue about Babakar's demise. Anne Pellegrini comes clean about the past.

1995
After Babakar’s death, Assane remains in their apartment without adult supervision. Realizing that no arrangements have been made for him, Dumont arrives and begins questioning Assane about his living situation. Assane claims that he lives with his mother; Dumont, fully aware that Assane is lying, orders him to pack his bags. Not wanting to leave, Assane attempts to escape out the window but gets caught by Dumont.

Assane is taken to an orphanage, where a social worker gives him a bible to read. Assane instead chooses to reread the Arsène Lupin stories, though he hides the latter book inside his bible. Later, the social worker tells Assane that an anonymous benefactor has paid for him to be schooled at the elite College d’Andrésy. He also gives Assane a letter from his father, which appears to be a confession of guilt regarding the disappearance of the necklace. Upset by its contents, Assane tosses the letter away.

When he begins attending the College d’Andrésy, Assane is bullied almost immediately due to his race and his working-class immigrant background. However, another student comes to his aid, telling the group of boys making fun of Assane to clear off or face being reported to the school’s director. The boy who helped Assane introduces himself as Benjamin Ferel.

Present Day
Assane visits Benjamin in his antiques shop and has him inspect Marie-Antoinette’s necklace. Benjamin tells Assane that contrary to what the Pellegrinis had stated, the necklace was never taken apart, and was completely unmarked, suggesting that it had never been stolen in the first place and that Babakar was innocent of the crime of which he had been accused.

News reaches the Pellegrinis that the necklace recovered by the police during the Louvre burglary was actually a copy. Juliette Pellegrini visits her mother Anne in a swanky Parisian hotel. Anne comments that she lives in a “prison of gold” built by Hubert, and tells Juliette to be careful when dealing with her father, as he has many skeletons in his closet. As she leaves the hotel, Juliette is given an anonymous message telling her to be at the Luxembourg Gardens in 14 hours without any police protection.

When he meets Juliette, Assane is dressed like a Deli + Eat delivery man and wearing a face mask and sunglasses. Against Assane’s wishes, Juliette has tipped the police off about the note that had been left for her, and they are monitoring the two closely, though they cannot discern Assane’s identity. After sitting down, Assane takes off his facial covering, leading Juliette to gasp in shock. Before she can blurt his name out, Assane covers the microphone pin she is wearing on her jacket. Assane tells Juliette that he knows that the necklace was never taken apart. Juliette replies that she and Hubert had cooked up the story to drum up publicity for the auction, and reveals that the original necklace had been bought from a South African jeweller five years previously. Assane exhorts Juliette to tell him that his father was innocent; Juliette cannot, as she legitimately believes Babakar to have been guilty.

Assane abruptly leaves Juliette and jumps on a bike, heading for the exit of the park. Laugier, supervising the situation, orders his officers to follow Assane, but soon a number of identically-dressed men appear with meal deliveries (which Assane had previously ordered). Laugier is furious when, due to the confusion created by the other deliverymen, Assane escapes. Later, Laugier brings Juliette into his office to ask her about her knowledge of the necklace theft. Sensing that she is being accused of collusion and not wanting to give Assane away. Juliette threatens to use her connections to get Laugier fired if he does not find the necklace.

Irritated by Juliette’s inability to clear Babakar’s name, Assane examines the signed confession once more. He suddenly realizes that several words are misspelled; this is out of character for Babakar, who had always stressed the importance of good spelling to Assane. Two of the misspellings, “comet” and “librarye,” particularly strike Assane’s attention, as there had been an Étienne Comet in the same prison as Babakar, and he had worked in the prison library. Comet is still being held in the same prison, although he is ill and confined to his cell.

Assane enters the prison under the guise of a visitation with an inmate named Djibril Traoré. He tells Traoré that he intends to take his place; initially, Traoré finds the idea ludicrous as he and Assane do not look alike, but eventually warms to it. After slipping into Traoré’s handcuffs, Assane is taken to a cell while Traoré walks free. Now installed in prison, Assane attempts to make contact with Comet, but finds out that the aging prisoner's health has taken a turn for the worse and that he is in the infirmary. Shortly afterward, Assane is attacked by a group of men who claim that Djibril Traoré owed them a thousand euros’ worth of marijuana, which Assane has three days to give to them.

Assane attempts to infiltrate the infirmary by flirting with the nurse and claiming that he has a stomach complaint; after briefly questioning him about his symptoms, the nurse dismisses him. Later, Assane insults the group of men who had accosted him the previous day, and one of them stabs him in the stomach with a sharpened toothbrush. This time, the nurse allows him to remain in the infirmary overnight. When she leaves, Assane takes the opportunity to visit Comet, who reveals that Babakar had given him a book which contained answers, and that he still has it. Assane goes to Comet’s cell and retrieves the book, another collection of Arsène Lupin stories, in which some letters and words have been faintly marked. When put together, the marked parts of the book spell out the message “Am innocent, trapped by Anne Pellegrini.”

In prison, Assane visits Comet one last time. Clearly dying, Comet asks Assane to make his wife smile. Assane agrees to this, thanking Comet for saving the book. Later that night, Assane pretends to hang himself in the prison bathrooms, taking several sleeping pills to slow his heart rate and using a stolen basketball net as a safety harness. Upon discovering his apparently lifeless body, the prison nurse is horror-struck, and Assane is bundled onto an ambulance and sent to the hospital. Assane wakes up in the ambulance and escapes when it stops at a traffic light.

The next day, Assane enters Anne Pellegrini’s apartments and angrily confronts her over Babakar’s death. Anne admits that she made Babakar sign a confession to the theft despite believing in his innocence, but reveals that she did it in the hope that it would help reduce his sentence, having been told that the judge would be lenient and that Dumont, who had been in charge of the case, would help Babakar, neither of which were true. Anne also tells Assane that she was the one who paid for his education at the College d’Andrésy. Later that night, Assane breaks into the home of Comet’s wife and leaves her one of the diamonds from Marie-Antoinette’s necklace.

Juliette, meanwhile, asks her father whether Babakar really stole the necklace. Hubert becomes enraged by the question, castigating Juliette for bringing up an event over two decades in the past and reaffirming that Babakar was the thief. After calming down, Hubert apologizes for his outburst, stating that his feelings were hurt by what he perceived as an attack from Juliette.

At the police station, a young detective named Youssef Guedira notices that Assane’s aliases “Paul Sernine” and “Luis Perenna” are anagrams of “Arsène Lupin.” Guedira, as much a Lupin aficionado as Assane, has begun to believe that the necklace theft is related to the crime stories. He presents his theory to the lieutenant, Sofia Belkacem, who finds it ridiculous and advises him not to repeat it to Laugier, who is still upset at being outsmarted by Assane in Luxembourg Gardens.

Claire is surprised and happy to see that Raoul is enjoying the Arsène Lupin book that Assane gave him. In fact, he is so obsessed by the stories that he has been largely avoiding video games.

Cast

 * Omar Sy as Assane Diop
 * Ludivine Sagnier as Claire
 * Clotilde Hesme as Juliette Pellegrini
 * Nicole Garcia as Madame Anne Pellegrini
 * Hervé Pierre as Hubert Pellegrini
 * Antoine Gouy as Benjamin Ferel
 * Fargass Assandé as Babakar
 * Soufiane Guerrab as Youssef Guedira
 * Vincent Londez as Capitaine Romain Laugier
 * Shirine Boutella as Lt. Sofia Belkacem
 * Moussa Sylla as Lieutenant Barreto
 * Johann Dionnet	as Jeune Gabriel Dumont


 * Eric Paul as Monsieur Philippe Bouchard
 * Linda Massoz as Infirmiere Prison
 * Saïd Benchnafa	as Bogdan
 * Karim Lasmi as Mirko
 * François Creton as Etienne Comit
 * Athaya Monkozi	as Djibril Traore
 * Laurent Maurel as Collègue Guedira
 * Lazare Mohamed	as José
 * Denis Mathieu	as Détenu 1
 * Étienne Ménard	as Détenu 2
 * Mehdi Fettah as Ambulancier
 * Mamadou Haidara as Jeune Assane
 * Adrian Valli De Villebonne	as Jeune Benjamin Ferel

Music

 * "Coffre-fort" by Mathieu Lamboley
 * "Sway" by Rosemary Clooney (with Pérez Prado y Su Orquesta)
 * "Le Voyageur" by Mathieu Lamboley
 * "Gentleman" by Mathieu Lamboley
 * "Lupin" by Mathieu Lamboley
 * "Arsène" by Mathieu Lamboley

Trivia

 * Assane's meeting with Juliette in Luxembourg Gardens took place on October 18th, 2020. The date is visible on a post-it note on Guedira's wall in the following episode.