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 situation. Assane claims that he is sixteen and that lives with his mother; Dumont, fully aware that Assane is lying on both counts, 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 named Philippe Bouchard gives him a bible. Assane instead chooses to reread the Arsène Lupin stories, although he hides the latter book inside his bible. Later, Bouchard tells Assane that an anonymous benefactor has paid for him to be educated at the elite Andrésy school. 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 aside.

When he begins attending the Andrésy school, Assane is harassed almost immediately due to his race and his working-class immigrant background. However, another student comes to his aid, telling Assane's bullies to clear off or face being reported to the school's authorities. The boy who helped Assane introduces himself as Benjamin Ferel.

Present Day
With Raoul in tow, Assane visits Benjamin in his antiquary and inquires about the state of the Queen's Necklace. Benjamin tells Assane that contrary to what the Pellegrinis had claimed, the necklace was never taken apart, and was completely unmarked, suggesting that it had never been stolen in the first place. Assane is shocked by the news, and its implications with regards to Babakar's innocence.

News breaks that the necklace recovered by the police following the Louvre burglary was actually a copy. Juliette Pellegrini visits her mother Anne in a swanky Parisian hotel, and the two discuss the situation. Anne comments that she lives in a “prison of gold” built by Hubert, and urges Juliette to be careful when dealing with him, due to the many skeletons he has in his closet. As she leaves the hotel, Juliette is given an anonymous message telling her to be at Luxembourg Gardens at 2:00 PM without any police protection.



When he meets Juliette, Assane is dressed in the uniform of a Deli + Eat delivery man, wearing a mask and sunglasses that obscure his face. Against Assane’s wishes, Juliette has informed the police about the note that had been left for her, and they monitor the two closely, although 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 places his hand over the microphone pin she is wearing on her jacket, and tells her that he knows that the necklace was never taken apart. Juliette admits that she and Hubert had thought 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. Captain Laugier, supervising the situation from a surveillance van, orders his officers to follow Assane, but soon a number of identically-dressed men appear with deliveries (which Assane had previously ordered). Laugier is furious when, due to the confusion created by the other deliverymen, Assane escapes the gardens. Later, he brings Juliette into the interrogation room to ask her about her relationship with the man she had spoken with. 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; in Assane's view this is out of character for Babakar, who had always stressed the importance of proper spelling. 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 who 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 visit with an inmate named Djibril Traoré, whom he claims is his cousin. Assane tells Traoré that he intends to take his place; initially, Traoré finds the idea ludicrous as he and Assane do not look alike. However, after Assane reminds Traoré that he had previously been in solitary confinement, and manages to slip into Traoré’s handcuffs, the inmate accepts. The guards have changed over during the visit, and the new guard, unaware of which of the two men is the real Traoré, takes Assane to a cell. Now installed in prison, Assane attempts to make contact with Comet, but finds out that the aging man's health has taken a turn for the worse and that he is in the infirmary. Shortly afterward, Assane is attacked by Bodgan and Mirko, two men who claim that Djibril Traoré owed them three thousand euros’ worth of drugs, 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, but after briefly questioning him about his symptoms, the nurse dismisses him. Later, Assane insults Bogdan and Mirko, and they stab him in the stomach with a sharpened toothbrush. This time, the nurse allows him to remain in the infirmary overnight, as she suspects that the wound was the result of a suicide attempt. In the middle of the night, Assane takes the opportunity to visit Comet, who reveals that Babakar had given him a book which contained answers to Assane's questions, and that he still has it in his cell. After being discharged from the infirmary, Assane retrieves the book, a collection of Arsène Lupin stories in which some letters and words have been faintly marked. When put together, the marked segments spell out the message “Am innocent, framed by Anne Pellegrini.”



After Assane's wound re-opens, he visits the infirmary again, where he sees Comet one last time. Clearly dying, Comet asks Assane to make his wife smile. Assane agrees to this, thanking Comet for having saved 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 hotel room and angrily interrogates her about Babakar's accusation. Anne admits that she had urged Babakar to 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 was in charge of the case, would help Babakar, neither of which were ultimately true. Anne also tells Assane that she was the one who paid for his education at the Andrésy school, but this does little to calm Assane's fury about the injustice his father suffered. Later that night, Assane quietly breaks into the home of Comet’s wife and fulfils his promise by leaving her one of the diamonds from Marie-Antoinette’s necklace.

Juliette, meanwhile, visits her father and asks him whether Babakar was truly responsible for the disappearance of the Queen's Necklace. Hubert becomes enraged by the question, castigating Juliette for bringing up a decades-old event and reaffirming that Babakar was guilty. After calming down, Hubert apologizes for his outburst, stating that his feelings were hurt by what he perceived as an attack from his own daughter.

At the police station, a young detective named Youssef Guédira notices that Assane’s aliases “Paul Sernine” and “Luis Perenna” are anagrams of “Arsène Lupin.” Guédira, as much a Lupin aficionado as Assane, has begun to believe that the Louvre heist is related to the crime stories. He presents his theory to his co-worker, Lieutenant Sofia Belkacem, who finds it ridiculous and advises him not to repeat it to Laugier.

Claire is surprised and happy to see that Raoul is largely ignoring his video games in favor of the Arsène Lupin book that Assane gave him. He is so obsessed with the stories that he has been staying up past his bedtime to read them.

Cast

 * Omar Sy as Assane Diop
 * Ludivine Sagnier as Claire Laurent
 * Clotilde Hesme as Juliette Pellegrini
 * Nicole Garcia as Anne Pellegrini
 * Hervé Pierre as Hubert Pellegrini
 * Antoine Gouy as Benjamin Férel
 * Fargass Assandé as Babakar Diop
 * Soufiane Guerrab as Youssef Guédira
 * Vincent Londez as Romain Laugier
 * Shirine Boutella as Sofia Belkacem
 * Moussa Sylla as Lieutenant Barreto
 * Johann Dionnet	as young Gabriel Dumont
 * Éric Paul as Monsieur Philippe Bouchard


 * Linda Massoz as prison nurse
 * Saïd Benchnafa	as Bogdan
 * Karim Lasmi as Mirko
 * François Creton as Étienne Comet
 * Athaya Monkozi	as Djibril Traoré
 * Laurent Maurel as Guédira's colleague
 * Lazare Mohamed	as José
 * Denis Mathieu	as detainee 1
 * Étienne Ménard	as detainee 2
 * Mehdi Fettah as ambulance driver
 * Mamadou Haïdara as young Assane Diop
 * Adrian Valli De Villebonne	as young Benjamin Férel
 * Etan Simon as Raoul Diop

Music

 * original music by Mathieu Lamboley
 * "Sway" by Rosemary Clooney (with Pérez Prado y Su Orquesta)

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 Guédira's wall in the following episode.