Everything Happened | vol. 210

The fantasy of la famille Kretz

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The Parisian Agency appears at first to be one of the fleet of luxury real estate reality shows from Netflix but don’t be fooled, it is actually a science fiction program. Imagine a world, it demands of the viewer, where hot people are kind and sincere. Where love lasts. Where the ultra-rich have decent taste and allow their faces to age uninhibited.

Unlike Selling Sunset, where unrelated real estate agents are encouraged to act with the loyalty of a family while warring like rival medieval clans, the agents of Paris-based Kretz & Partners are actually a family and they seem to genuinely cherish each other. Like, it’s weird.

I have a hard time enjoying reality television, not because I’m so intellectual, but because I find conflict psychically unbearable. Not to be a bummer, but I grew up in a home with a lot of shouting and so that vibe is not something I seek out for fun. Scripted tension is fine, this particular anxiety doesn’t extend to your prestige dramas for me. “Real” tension being the main currency of reality TV keeps me mostly out of the game. I watch RHOSLC but I fast-forward through the arguments. I get through an episode in like 12 minutes using this approach. Lol.

I remember watching Real World: New Orleans with my friends when it aired and feeling then, as I do now, almost incapable of watching people be hostile and unkind on purpose. I watched through my hands and my friends made fun of me. Sweet teen me, ever the practical, level-headed double Taurus, stated a bold, likely unoriginal desire: I would aim to be cast on a reality program and then be decent, chill, and understanding. I would not court conflict. I would simply vibe.

“Yeah, but no one wants to see that,” my friend pointed out at the time. She was right. She got it and I didn’t. Chaos sells. Stability doesn’t.

But then I started watching

this
fuckin’
show

Ok, let me introduce the cast to you. Olivier, short king, warm features, patriarch of la famille Kretz. His bride Sandrine of 40 years, no nonsense, chic, natural. They married in their early 20s and seem to draw comfort and happiness from their partnership. Nothing about this family feels like a performance. It is the damnedest thing.

Sandrine, a former schoolteacher, gave birth to three sons a few years apart. Confident Martin, the eldest, who favors Olivier and has two young children with his partner, Ève. Mischievous Valentin, who favors Sandrine and has a toddler son with wife, Charina. Reserved Louis, who seems to have a girlfriend but lives in the family home. All three of the older sons work for the family real estate business. There is also teenage Raphäel, surprise perimenopause baby on whom everyone, including and especially his big brothers, seems to dote.

Majo, twice-widowed octogenarian mother of Sandrine, who is gruff elegance with her stacked blonde bob. Majo lives next door to the Kretz home and visits every day. The sons Kretz take joy in their grandmother’s presence and while she is smitten with what she calls her “handsome grandsons,” she doesn’t blow smoke up anyone’s ass. Martin invites her to his final suit fitting for his wedding and he refers to her presence as “therapy” in the face of his pre-wedding jitters. In one particularly moving scene, Louis is crushed after one of his first viewings with a client goes poorly. Majo talks him through it, advising him not to mimic his assertive big brothers but to view his mildness as a strength. In a confessional to the camera, Majo recalls the difficulty Louis had in school and how it wrecked his sense of self. You sense that she is still crushed by the memory of this. It’s devastating.

Don’t get me wrong, the show is corny. It has the usual stunt “occasions.” Unlike Selling Sunset, which begged viewers to pretend that a dog birthday party would be happening if there were no cameras rolling, these events feel believable. Martin and Ève get married in one episode. Who knows if the couple, two successful professionals who already have children together, would have tied the knot were there not producers pushing the idea. However, the wedding itself is without artifice. Ève wears a short dress and her hair looks air-dried. It’s lovely.

More occasions of course, one for each episode. It all seems to make sense within the world of a wealthy Parisian family in real estate. A party for a milestone birthday. A trip to Ibiza for a client hoping to buy property there. A team-building retreat. Even a client party in the family home featuring lingerie models on a catwalk doesn’t require suspension of my disbelief. Idk, it’s Paris. Elderly Majo walks past a pole dancer whose inverted legs make a V and she barely reacts.

The team-building retreat in the first episode is the first time I really sat up and paid attention. While meditating, stoic Olivier finds himself involuntarily crying. We see his wife and sons respond in confessionals with such compassion for their dad, who overly burdens himself in the business. When it’s time for the family members to plunge, one by one, into an ice bath for some reason, they spend the confessionals admiring one another’s nerve. Olivier and Sandrine are impressed that timid Louis opts to go first in the ice bath. They are proud. Sandrine, who first vows she will not be getting in the water, faces the challenge with fierce calm. Valentin beams in confessional, calling his mom “une guerrière,” a warrior.

Unlike Keeping Up with the Kardashians, where words of praise for family members do not always feel connected to evidence, the people in this family seem to really see each other. I don’t know that I’ve seen anything like it on TV.

Am I being played here with this fantasy world? Could I ever dare to dream that my adult son would want to see me, not every day, but often? Would any of my adult children not only not screen my calls, but call me a warrior? Like anyone with an internet connection, I have spent a lot of time over the years taking in constructions of family life. I always wanted a big family, probably to heal childhood wounds but also because of the comfort I take in low-simmering chaos.

We are basically presented with two versions of family life in media, the idyllic and the toxic. This family is neither. Everything is not kum-ba-yah with the family Kretz; they face stressful work and personal situations and tempers flare. When two of them are arguing, there is no clear person in the right or wrong. Things smooth over and they are quick to apologize. They seem to really love each other. Lack of conflict, as I’ve learned in therapy, may feel like safety but doesn’t lead to true intimacy. And either this rich hot Parisian family is the real deal, or they’ve pulled one over magnificently on me.

Also they sell luxury real estate.

yr mate,
Evie
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