Original subtitles

What can I say that I haven't already said or that...

I really want you to finish this work, to get rid of this.

Why, dad?

Because your mother never managed to get rid of it.

And There you go.

And I think that...

Basically, I think your future is not here, it is elsewhere.

And that you drag boxes that you don't necessarily need to drag around.

Well, that your mother carried this around her whole life, and that's what drove her crazy.

And I think your future, your strength,

your energy is elsewhere.

She is with your children, she is in your work,

she is with people who are around you.

She's not in a desperate attempt to understand something

which is incomprehensible, because it is absurd.

Toilet.

I'm mostly working at the moment

around what I call my genesis, that is to say before me.

You must have been twenty months old...

You wrote.

I'm going to say... Since you know...

Your latest book only talks about your own mother, who also wrote.

Wait, what year do you think it is?

53.

It was 53, in fact.

She’s still an incredible character, isn’t she, my mother?

For this book, you recorded your conversations on these dictaphones

with the surviving witnesses of your childhood.

You read all of your mother's correspondence.

You sorted through thousands of photos accumulated in the crates.

You read his notebooks.

You copied all of the notes she had written

on the small diaries kept in this suitcase.

You archived everything,

your writings and those of your mother, your notebooks, your manuscripts,

the enigma of your faces

and your voice.

- Good morning. - Good morning.

Come in.

Do you want a tea, a glass of water, something?

No, it's OK, I have what I need.

Uh...

It was his office.

SO...

These are his jeans, his T-shirt.

I took a cardigan with her scarf,

her matching handbag.

There you have his agenda,

passport, identity document, Vitale card.

I have two pairs of glasses.

I don't know, you tell me which one you prefer.

I bought brown lenses, as you have blue eyes.

She had brown eyes.

Her perfume.

There, then, his watch and rings.

She wore this necklace all the time.

The wig.

There's a mirror there, if you want...

change you.

I would like your shoes.

- Eh? - Your shoes.

"My mother left me a riddle.

"The story of our relationship."

You are doing exactly what she already did,

investigate your mother.

My grandmother also wrote a book about her own mother.

After the death of her mother, Carole Achache kept a suitcase

into which the diaries were thrown pell-mell

on which she noted

his appointments and a few sentences reflecting his moods

as well as photos of a lifetime.

A life essentially devoted to books and those who write them.

Monique Lange worked at Gallimard since the 1950s

by climbing all the ranks, daring one day to start writing.

I remember this office

who whispered a little that I was useless but funny.

At that time, it was extraordinary.

It was the 50s.

We ate in the canteen, we all pushed each other to be next to Camus.

I knew Genet, who had a profound impact on my life.

I knew Marguerite Duras, I knew Violette Leduc.

It was a very, very great time.

Carole Achache, who became a photographer,

started writing about his family

and its secrets in 2008, with La Plage de Trouville,

through the story of a painting stolen by the Nazis from his grandmother's house

during the Occupation.

Today, she publishes with Stock Fille de,

a book that speaks with tenderness and violence about his mother,

and the life she led with her.

A life where she had the extraordinary chance to meet

artists, intellectuals and writers.

A life where she had the misfortune of not being able to be just a child

protected, listened to, consoled.

A life where a strange silence settles in the middle of the incessant

and fascinating conversations of overly brilliant adults.

At the same time, I first want to transpose this kind of brilliant moment.

- Yes. - Awesome!

- Yes. - Of this...

There is the whole personal aspect which can be fascinating...

Sad.

- Sad and exciting. - Yeah.

For a reader, it is fascinating.

She's still an incredible character, my mother.

He's an incredible character...

Listen, the credits, if it were a film...

At times it's a film, but hey,

let's forget about cinema, completely.

The credits of this book are incredible,

the cast is incredible.

With, in order of appearance in this manuscript,

Monique Lange, Dionys Mascolo,

Jean Genet...

We should not rule out the possibility

that I have a particular weakness for the book

because of the kindness of the portrait you paint of me.

Growing up where you grew up, having a mother like yours,

- it was already a certain chance.

And what luck! It was the 50s in Paris,

what Monique Lange was to the right bank,

Marguerite Duras, whom she knew very well, was on the left bank.

We were 25 years old,

it was Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

This is where everything decisive that happened

in our youth, in our feelings,

in our beliefs, in our madness...

We went crazy about communism, we said that the people

had the right to decide what his fight would be.

As per usual,

we haven't written about it.

We don't write about happiness.

in a violent way in the war and they rushed.

- It's still, I think... - Action.

That was it, that time,

Carole Achache,

politics, literature,

discussions at night

while drinking, smoking,

and the children had to fend for themselves.

Yes. It was obvious to my mother

or for Duras,

that we take advantage of this kind of...

happiness,

as Duras says, and passion.

And then, we must also think that,

at the end of the war, in this environment,

there was this desire for freedom

which was crazy and necessary.

A lot of... A lot of people turned

- the back violently...

- ...to the war and they went for it. - To the war and they rushed.

I consider that they are a lot...

- freer than we were in 1968. - Ah, damn.

I've never done anything so hard in my life

And There you go. "But..."

"But crazy and necessary" is good.

I consider that they are much freer

that we were in 1968 because we were much more courageous.

Children, we had to make the most of it.

But we also had to adapt.

What meant to a child

not to have a child's life,

already have a life as a little adult very early.

I couldn't have known.

I didn't know what another child's life was like.

It’s true that I was very lucky

because it’s a wonderful food.

So we cannot consider

that early knowledge

is something harmful,

but actually,

the game, GAME, was not very present at home.

And you very early on had to face

what often happens is the departure of the father.

Here I am full of good advice, as knowledgeable as anyone

and nicely embarrassed to have to write you this letter.

I beg you, having read it, destroy it.

More and more obsessed with what you know,

I didn't hold back from talking about it to a doctor whom I respect very much.

Don't blame me but all this is throwing me into such a big hole.

Little 1, why wait two months?

It may very well be that you cannot hide the thing within yourself for long.

Little 2, there are ways to avoid going through Switzerland.

You would be there to try the thing, without inconvenience, I imagine.

But you all alone, so far from me?

I feel more and more like we are two children.

If you saw the face I'm making here.

Little A, or you come to Alsace near me,

I would be more reassured, we will see.

Little B, or if you think you can do it,

You will use the process that is indicated to me.

The main thing seems to me to be to avoid surgical intervention.

which, even in Switzerland, has what it takes

scare me.

If you knew someone who could give you these injections,

it appears that they are extremely effective.

In the meantime, walk, run, do not lie down, etc.

Until, etc.

It's Benzo-Gynoestryl number 5.

Two ampoules in a syringe per day in four days.

Intramuscular injection in the buttock.

Four pricks of two blisters each time. On the ninth day,

it must come, but if it is insufficient, start again,

because without trouble, without curettage.

There you go, decide.

My poor darling, I am confused, disgusting, humiliated, forgive me.

I'm really panicked, answer me quickly.

I would like us to have a month of calm.

A month during which I will make amends for this letter.

Jean-Jacques.

Destroy this letter.

Little C. How long have you been waiting for your last seasons?

Little D.

I love you.

The surrogate father was a Spaniard.

His name was Juan Goytisolo,

he was an anti-Francoist Spanish refugee, politically engaged,

- writer.

Should I remind you of the story?

It's the story of a young girl who is very in love.

of a man who doesn't love her.

And it's only at the end of the book that she discovers that

the reason he doesn't like her is because he's gay.

It's been about a year

that I started hanging out with Arabs.

It only took me a few weeks to realize the facts.

I regained my balance and moved closer to you.

But also I discovered

that I was totally,

definitely, irremediably homosexual.

Since that date, you will have observed that our relations have improved.

Although differently, I began to love you more than before

and I achieved a kind of happiness that I had never known before.

I felt serene,

happy to share life with you,

to have you and Carole next to me.

Today, I am at an impasse.

I can't offer you anything, promise you anything.

I fear your reaction

and secretly, I desire her.

I know that I am destroying my happiness to be near you, which is so strong.

I'm afraid of living without you.

There is your face, your capacity for love,

your eyes, your tenderness.

I have never been closer to anyone.

I have never gone so far in love as with you.

From now on, the success or failure of our relationship

depended on our desire to stay together.

The illusion of forming a normal couple had been wrecked

and we had to take up the challenge of creating something new.

But the love, the understanding, the mutual respect that we possessed

would it be enough to maintain the strength of the bonds that we considered essential?

My question is why... Why do gays

from my mother?

Toi, Genet? Et Juan!

I don't know where his taste comes from

for gays, I don't know.

It's inexplicable,

if not a great masochism.

But he’s a very moving person.

I think she had a difficult life.

Fortunately, she had a kind of fantasy...

distance. He is someone who has had a difficult life.

She was tragic.

She was tragic.

Yes, that’s it. That is what I am saying.

But, I think that, deep down,

she was very good at Gallimard,

because it was placed there,

next to people

which were totally, but then...

more than tragic!

And deep down she was in the middle,

she was not isolated.

Mmh.

I'm going to reread it once.

She says she was frigid...

Before my father.

Yes, well, eh...

So things were better with my father.

And then very quickly...

very quickly she was deceived.

And it's a text that she wrote after her operation.

I finally understood,

not the pathology she had...

- Her uterus was removed. - Her uterus was removed.

So exactly,

I asked a doctor, because...

It was an incoherent name that she said.

No, no, no, no, it was some kind of...

She talks about necrobiosis.

And...

The text is terrible because she says: "Finally, I lost my uterus..."

"Finally, I lost my uterus,

"even if it's not the sexual organ, finally...

"Because, for lack of having used it...

"And it took me a week to get over it,

"Luckily I had…"

And it looks so much like...

To this... suicide... - Suicide...

- Corporal... - Corporal...

Yes, absolutely.

- Which she got. - Which she had.

I always had the impression

that there was something

which was not resolved.

It’s incredible.

There are letters from my adolescence that she retyped on a typewriter.

That means she was going through my stuff.

I don't like that very much.

No, but there is... It's sexuality by proxy.

But the more we think about,

I don’t know, Monique’s trajectory,

the more we are obliged to say to ourselves

that sexuality

had importance and consequences...

- Well, especially with me! - ...terrible.

Nah, I mean, this kind of fusional being that we...

Completely.

She thinks I'm great, I can tell.

There is this passion for me in my mother's eyes,

whatever the day, the second.

Even from behind when I walk in front, it's an acid burn.

Rue Montorgueil, on Sundays she sells L’Humanité,

the front page of a newspaper facing passers-by,

I am sitting near her on the step of a building entrance

and I receive his happiness like a shower of glitter.

She's crazy about me, I'm drunk.

During big dinners on Rue Poissonnière,

pressed against each other,

always this look from my mother that I feel resting on me,

intermittently, from the other end of the table.

Even without looking at her, I feel proud.

My seriousness, my seriousness.

And my mother's smile. And his happiness again.

I am exceptional.

One Thursday, my mother notes: "Carole’s definition of cockroach:

"A little long sadness if we don’t control it."

Which gave me a little freshness,

It’s insecurity.

Genet invites me to lunch alone near his hotel.

I am proud. Monica too.

She's so happy that he's interested in me.

We are the two people she loves most in the world,

even Juan doesn't have that place.

Hanging out with Genet is the best thing that could happen to me at the moment.

I can only benefit from its uniqueness.

She thinks it's wonderful.

It's an incredible opportunity.

And it's true, I feel that he enjoys discovering me.

He laughs with me.

It gives me an unusual way of thinking.

It helps me to confirm my revolt and not to be like the others...

He is joyful in my presence.

I have gifts that Monique doesn't have.

I give him back the taste for living.

I'm much funnier than her.

There are childish moments in him as childish as mine.

We are capable

to return a menu to the front of a restaurant

or empty a salt shaker into a vase.

I even have a story with her lover at the time, Jacky.

I stop by Genet before leaving.

He still hasn't moved.

He smokes sitting in the center of the bed.

I'm going to take a sip of water straight from the tap,

in the bathroom, right behind him.

I don't light it, I keep the door open.

I get a stab in the back.

"It seems that you suck badly, according to Jacky, and that you bite.

"I’m doing better."

Sitting on his bed, a cigar in his hand, in striped pajamas,

he tells me that I will never be able to make him hard.

Me, yes.

I'm sure yes.

He doesn't give up.

"Yes. Tss, tss. But yes. Try."

He wakes up

and remains standing, exquisitely freezing.

I touch his testicles, under the pants, without zipper.

"See, I was right, no woman can."

Are you Monique's only daughter?

Yes. Yeah yeah.

It's incredible, though.

Why?

No, when you have an only daughter,

I don't know, we...

It's rare that it establishes slightly strange connections...

Why "weird"?

There were two people in the world that she adored more than anything,

It was me and Jean.

That's it.

So for her, that I...

can be elected by Jean...

Because when I was eleven, we were talking in his hotel,

I skipped classes, it's true that...

I was lucky to have wonderful discussions with him.

But very quickly, he played on me.

He challenged me.

"You can't do that..."

And so a little kid who has a slightly soft brain,

it is easily manipulated.

I haven't yet managed to decipher all the letters

that you sent to my mother because your handwriting is terrible!

Thank you.

But you warned my mother

Many times

that Genet was dangerous.

No, he was crazy! He was crazy.

A pervert...

Do you know he hurt me?

Genet hurt me.

- Oh right? - Yeah.

That's why I'm asking these questions.

Ah!

But unfortunately, it's someone I don't know

because your mom was...

possessed by him.

Yeah.

But the more people hurt her, the more she loved people.

So what do you want!

She was served by Genet!

More than served...

And...

But she sacrificed herself!

She sacrificed herself!

But she loved it...

All the people she knew, it was the opportunity

to sacrifice for them.

To be their victim!

Not that people abuse it, but...

she presented herself as a victim, so...

We took advantage of it!

She was submissive to those she loved.

Totally.

And so, it was...

It was wonderful

And at the same time very childish,

his round face, his bursts of laughter.

It’s all Genet’s ambiguity,

that is to say, it is a being

completely luminous and at the same time very childish.

His round face, his bursts of laughter.

Yes, he hated women.

At the time I saw him a lot, I was quite young,

I was eleven, twelve years old, so I was still androgynous.

And I think he liked me too because I seem moody,

a little Arab,

and maybe it reminded him of Abdallah, the tightrope walker,

who had committed suicide at that time.

But Abdallah is such an intimate part of my life

that I prefer not to talk about it on camera.

I will never forget Abdallah,

the tightrope walker that I adored and that at ten years old I wanted to marry.

Abdallah fell from the top of the wire, unprotected.

Shortly after, he came back up, perhaps too soon,

to repeat a number before Genet's eyes,

who wished, sitting below, that he would go further, ever further.

Another fall.

Then the doctors' sentence.

Abdallah no longer had the right to take risks

in his costume with a thousand sequins

under the big top of any circus.

It had become commonplace.

There is this word "banal" which is omnipresent in Genet.

I heard the adults around me whispering

and imply a tragedy,

as an announced chronicle of his suicide.

Everyone was worried.

And then, one evening, he hanged himself.

No, I don’t want to talk about my pain like that.

I would like to put it into a story.

Yes.

I am still the child

of an intellectual world, and that too, I wonder about,

how did they leave me like this?

For what?

And my pain is there.

And in no case,

I take you all away

in my history to endorse anything.

It's just because my question,

it's: how can a kid like me, with such potential,

had such remarkable failure behavior?

That's it that's all.

I am regularly haunted by what I experienced.

Jorge Semprun was important

also for the creation of this book.

You went to see him to check on some memories,

and he looked at you,

you can feel it, with a sort of remorse,

saying that at one point you went crazy.

Much?

- Not good. - Why not.

When he looks at you, I said crazy, that's not it,

but we feel that he remembers you

like a teenage girl in revolt

and who started to do

madness, not to worry,

have no self-respect,

of his body.

At the same time, to want freedom

and show that she could move away from her mother.

For a moment, Carole Achache,

you have harmed yourself.

I had no choice.

I begin my story

from my sixteenth year.

Previously, I was sleepwalking, I had skipped a lot of steps,

but as for building myself, it was just a big rough draft.

I will not talk about my family, my social origin,

even if "Mister Freud" explained to me that it all comes from there.

In fact, until May 68,

my tribulations were totally lonely,

if not a few disparate encounters

that I did to fuck.

And then this famous month of May

made me come home

- in the dream, in reality.

In my reality.

This month of May, a great gift for my sixteenth birthday.

It simply allowed me not to disconnect from my revolt,

since the outside world had my color.

My discomfort,

I expressed it at that time through politics.

When I think about it, my activism was really bogus.

But I managed to find a few theories

which corresponded exactly to my laziness.

Doing politics means no longer putting up with the world.

I'm pretty sure that

I always wanted to do what I wanted, it's thanks to this little month.

It is an authorization that the company

gave me from that day on.

I am really happy and proud

to have experienced such a moment.

I spent the next summer wandering through Anar groups.

Impossible to return to high school.

I started living with a boy who was a year older than me.

I wanted to live, but I didn't know how.

Intellectual heritage didn't help me in that regard.

I only moved forward by moral references, without letting myself go.

Somehow,

I entered life knowing a little what not to do,

but not at all what should be done.

Everything was frozen in my head.

Everything crystallized into perfect boredom,

in a strange sadness.

I was starting to explode because intuitively,

- I saw that I was going nowhere.

I separated after a year of austerity from this boy

by meeting the world of Parisian stoners.

Just the fact that I'm starting to get high

enormously erased certain intellectual limits

that I had drawn for myself.

They were people for whom the only problem was to be well

and why not happy the same day.

They opened a free universe to me.

I was amazed.

I wanted to enter their circle,

be integrated, accepted.

I wanted to prove to them that I was capable of having fun,

to be crazier than them.

And this manifested itself as...

heroin shots,

or by the money that I gave them,

if they had any need.

A couple I admired couldn't pay their rent.

Well, the next day,

by stealing a few Genet scripts and reselling them, of course,

I brought them 600 francs.

Scam.

My God, how much that could turn me on!

This word

corresponded to a means of reacting against society

by living royally at his expense.

Books from the Pléiade, manuscripts,

letters from writers,

even a little drawing by Giacometti...

I have exhausted all the archive capital.

I began to relax physically.

I observed.

And at the same time, I absolutely wanted to be accepted.

It's really strange that I still have gratuitous guilt

which means that on any occasion,

I feel rejected or watched.

The only possibility for me to gain the upper hand,

it's about making love.

The number of times I resolved a situation by having sex.

But I couldn't really get used to being lazy.

I forced myself to believe like them so as not to be alone.

I did a lot of acid around that time.

I freaked out like crazy,

but I thought it was necessary

that I get over this freak out by taking some,

by taking some again.

Or,

I only had one desire,

it was to start making something of myself.

Then I met Jean.

I liked him because he made me laugh.

I had charmed him by cooking. Eh yes.

I sold my last manuscripts,

Genet, Violette Leduc,

to take a plane that would take us to New York.

We absolutely did not expect at all

in the freezing cold of this city.

I was happy, it's true,

in the most modern country in the world.

I was happy because I was right.

This country would be mine.

Two hours later,

my mood completely changed.

I was hungry.

Not a circle.

And above all, I began

to be down from all the dope

that I had taken.

He lived in a hotel nearby.

Around three or four in the morning,

the boy returned to his room to go to bed.

This idiot wanted to fuck me, who was dead tired.

Finally...

it was ten times more tiring to refuse,

to explain to him that tomorrow, perhaps, I will be better

and that I would see things more clearly.

It was better if I spread my legs

while dozing.

First sordid experience, upon my arrival.

Bof!

We started to sell

what we had left of value in our suitcases.

I had some small sexual obligations

towards our landlords, finally, it was cool.

I walked around New York every day.

It was beautiful.

- I had left Paris

because I couldn't achieve anything in this city.

We think too much in Paris.

I wanted a new world where I could build myself.

I didn't worry about financial issues at all.

I left every morning with a dollar or two in my pocket.

It was enough for my walks.

I was looking for meetings.

- I had hope in an underground

which has already been simmering for two years in the States...

My revolt has been and always will be, I hope,

the fact that the world of work makes people's daily lives sordid.

But in this register, there is no one more sordid than an American.

I wasn't even trying to get out of trouble.

Looking for work would have been a shame for me.

Roselyne then suggested that I escape a little from this sordidness.

and give me a good bell.

The owner of a French restaurant invited us there.

She had warned me of the guy's lack of interest.

He was a man of around fifty years old,

typical nouveau riche, happy with himself.

We sat down at the table.

The conversation did not interest me at all.

All I could think about was eating and drinking.

It was Roselyne who took care of the fair play side.

A sort of numbness came over me thanks to an excellent wine.

I became lascivious, indifferent to the external environment.

My body was warming up from the calories I had been lacking for some time.

The end of the meal was approaching.

At one point in the conversation I caught:

"Why don’t you go to my studio?"

And this was addressed to me from the boss.

Bof.

I was good, any experience was worth taking, for me,

and I'm a girl who, for the longest time, could never say no.

And this mixture of all the alcohols

had made me rather indifferent to my prejudices.

The boss got up to sort out the final details of...

At that moment, Roselyne said something like this:

"Don’t ask him for money first, he’ll slip you $20 in the end."

And this sentence

melted into my muddy state.

We went to the studio across from the restaurant.

Things went completely normally.

except that there was no search for a romantic encounter,

but it didn't bother me as it was unfortunately not the first time

that I was fucking without having a real human encounter.

Half an hour later, it was over.

I know I came.

Toilets, dressing. And indeed,

the me woman 20 dollars.

Roselyne thought I had guts,

that she had had more difficulty the first time.

The fog in my head continued.

We were walking in Manhattan. The air was quite fresh.

And I was starting to get tired.

She suggested that we spend the afternoon together

because there was an unexpected hit of 100 dollars each.

Two men on a business trip.

And suddenly,

the lump rose to my throat.

I was totally disgusted with myself.

I realized I had sold myself

morally.

Physically, I didn't give a damn.

But all my theories, my rebellion were...

undone by what I had just done.

Selling myself wasn't the problem.

But I had just messed up the one act

where I thought I was free.

I came from...

to compromise myself with this world that I hated.

In two hours,

I had just erased all my violence,

all my refusal.

Jean explained to me that this was the price to pay

for our freedom, that all the party folk side,

of need for unlimited happiness, that came at a very high price.

"The world is ugly. Life is very hard." That is what he said.

And,

ultimately, it was a very small moment to spend

to let yourself live afterwards.

I shouldn't have dreamed.

If we wanted to get something

of this society to live well,

It needs to be done.

Let me have no illusions,

it is the sine qua non condition for being able to live freely.

So.

I actually had no choice.

I never asked myself that question.

How do I get out of this financially?

I let myself live.

There was also this economic ease

that I had thanks to my mother,

which provided for all my needs.

I entered a strange reality,

that of lies,

pure compromise

and, in a way, deep disillusionment.

And I went to the end of this path.

I became a very good prostitute.

The plan was simple: get into the best hotel,

ask at reception if Mr. so-and-so was there,

make a fuss when faced with an obviously negative response

and finally settle down patiently

on an armchair that can panoramic

on the back and forth.

Uh...

After half an hour,

I found someone.

I experienced a real dichotomy.

I had several lives and I couldn't reconcile them,

but at the end,

it was impossible for me

not to incorporate my whore life

in my life

daughter of intellectuals.

If I analyze

my attitude during these years...

I can see that I was pursuing a process

suicidal.

I know details,

- but I don't know if they are... - So?

I don't know, they said that at the time,

I hesitate to be able to tell you, perhaps.

No, no, because...

That Genet pushed you to walk the sidewalk...

Oh no. Not. Not.

It's funny, why?

I don't know, someone told me that at the time.

Because in the end, I did it.

Yes.

But it's weird, it's incredible.

I did it but later.

- And I think that... - And Genet had nothing to do with it?

Non.

On the other hand, he was complicit...

I had a relationship with Jacky when I was too young. Really.

Where my mother is a little complicit... Which is not...

Really, I was 11... 12, 13 years old!

So in my opinion it is premature.

And... but it's funny, this thing.

That's the rumor, anyway.

I prostituted myself.

Which isn't great...

No.

to do! So.

But I thought it was really the work of Jean Genet...

- Listen... - Yeah?

You wouldn't have done it if Jean wasn't around!

Well, I don't know.

I totally agree.

But why do you say that?

I completely agree, but...

Because he had a taste for challenging people,

to challenge them,

to push them as far as possible in their contradictions,

in quotes, what were his fantasies, what.

He pushed Abdallah in this direction, where he pushed him.

He pushed Jacky where he pushed him... He broke people like that!

Throughout his life!

He broke me as a kid, really.

This is one of the reasons that derailed me.

Yes, of course.

So.

Could my mother have known?

That Genet would have put me...

I mean, it's serious!

I don't know. I can't say for sure, really.

No, it didn't happen directly,

but there was,

by dint of highlighting theft, delinquency and all that,

I had no other idea than to do that.

He was a manipulator, too.

Completely.

Why did my mother leave me with him?

That, she had such admiration for Genet

that she would have accepted anything. But really anything.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

SO...

It's my ambivalence, it's that: I have a dog of my female dog against Genet,

he's disgusting.

- Yes, no.

There you go. And at the same time, I know that

maybe I have some form of intelligence

which was trained by Jean.

- Yes. - Yes! So.

And it's true that my mother, in the middle of all this,

she plays a funny game.

That, yes, the mother-daughter relationship in these cases...

There, this one is amazing!

- Yeah... - Yes, there...

I was not understood.

They were writers, men or women.

I always put men before women because I love them.

That’s how it is, it’s carnal.

They penetrate me.

I feel them filling me.

It lasts a short time.

It lasts so little time that I didn't continue too much

to make me fill like that.

It reminded me too much of my emptiness.

It is not difficult for me at the moment to tell myself

that I am a piece of shit and eternally incapable.

How many are there, Noémie?

Four, three, two, one.

François Mitterrand is elected President of the Republic.

Two, three! Yeah!

Happy birthday...

Happy birthday, Mona

Happy birthday, Elio

OK, let’s stop there, right?

It's no coincidence

if I stayed with the father of my children for more than 30 years.

Finding balance by tidying up my house,

- sweeping, removing dust.

This need for the exterior to be organized,

so much inside I feel disfigured,

referring to severity in opposition

to whatever I have experienced.

Have I shown too much conformity in appearance,

to compensate for my lack of reference points?

Yes, one day you jammed your fingers like that.

You did... You were very, very hurt.

You cried. Oh oops!

Because you just have to take the drawer, like that.

You shouldn't put your fingers like that...

You have to grab the handle.

So. Well done! You've understood everything.

This is how it should be done. That way, you don't hurt yourself.

But is conformity a nasty disease for you?

It's a miserable disease, in any case.

And why is it a miserable disease?

Because it prevents you from existing.

Because people who are truly conformist have not lived.

Goods make one conformist, the accumulation of goods, wealth.

Throughout life, we become attached

not only to beings, we also attach ourselves to objects,

memories, photographs,...

It's not bad,

but you always have to be able to do without it.

Yes, but you don't do without it here, because...

Yes, of course, since they are there. But the day they are no longer there...

- Never mind? - Yes.

You know, the beautiful phrase from Cocteau that I have already quoted

in I don't know which magazine:

"What would you take if the house burned down?

"I would take away the fire."

Pretty.

Very pretty.

OK, I'm going to continue the comic strip.

My mother made a lot of noise when she drank her tea in the morning.

Ah, but I thought we were taking a little break there.

Not.

- Afterwards, she kept the sip.

And then she swallows.

- I hated that sound.

Well then, why reproduce it?

Happy birthday...

birthday

versary

Happy birthday...

Attention, attention, attention.

Yours. Come on, follow me, follow me...

I have, stram, gram,

pic and pic and... I'm lost.

Colegram!

I have, stram, gram, Laura!

Happy birthday

- Come on!

Bravo, I can't applaud with the cake in my hands...

You often told me

an anecdote that you were strangely proud of.

You were one year old.

I laid you down on the changing table to wash you.

Don't you have an ashtray?

I mixed up the bottle of physiological serum

with the 90% alcohol and I got it in your eyes.

You started screaming.

When I hit my bullshit,

I took the bottle of alcohol and put some in my eyes,

to feel the same pain as you.

Why this transmission of pain?

You quickly told me that your mother had been raped by several boys

during a bullfight in the streets of Pamplona.

This story is part of my childhood.

In your mouth, Pamplona sounded like a mythological tale.

As well as there was Hera

who threw Hephaestus out of the window because of his ugliness...

there was Penelope who unraveled at night what she had woven during the day,

and there was Momo,

who was raped by several boys

during a bullfight in the streets of Pamplona.

Small,

this singing word mixed with diffuse images

of a bloody bull and young boys

attacking my young grandmother in the Spanish streets

left impressions arising in me

as strange as they are romantic.

The specter of the abuse you suffered

then hovered over my childhood in a more insidious way,

but so much so that today, I realize how much I have grown

in the tacit idea that this would happen to me.

Because it always happened.

And that it wasn't really a tragedy, but an inevitability.

An essential initiation rite.

From my childhood, I keep happy memories of our frequent stays

in Juan's house, in Marrakech, where he lives half of his time.

At thirteen, I discovered Juan's homosexuality

and I understand better who Amir is, whom I have known forever

and who lives in the house with his brother and their family.

In the heart of the medina, this timeless happiness was inherent

to Amir's servitude for Juan and by extension for us.

Obviously, I loved this Moroccan part of my childhood.

I loved my grandfather.

And vice versa.

But at fourteen,

during one of our trips to Morocco,

Amir comes into my room every night

and I can't say no.

I tell you about it, you collapse

and you tell me you knew this would happen to me,

that this had happened to you too.

Because women are cursed in our family.

Later, Juan chose the comfort of maintaining his Moroccan life with Amir

to the detriment of my confessions,

suggesting to me, in a way, to submit to your silence.

I do not forget

and I sever my ties with Juan in the name of those he maintains with Amir.

Very quickly, I discovered that you reproduced the ambiguities of your own mother.

You are incapable of sacrificing the privilege of your relationship with Juan

in the name of abuse suffered by your daughter.

Mona, you told Juan his four truths,

so you freed yourself a little bit, right?

And I, former whore, have I not come a long way?

You find all my contacts with Juan despicable.

Like I was denying what happened to you.

I told you that you shouldn't confuse Amir and Juan.

But in fact, I was once again voiceless,

because actually

Juan's attitude towards you is zero.

And me,

I am in the middle, in my eternal silence,

having given all my strength to structure my children.

And I'm in the middle, having had a past

that the three of mine let it happen,

my father, my mother and Juan.

Sinister trinity that prevents me from screaming.

And I'm in the middle

and I'm tired of being nothing.

A piece of shit in your eyes.

A less than nothing having collaborated with the enemy.

And I'm in the middle,

having suffered acts

which I consider more serious

than those you experienced.

It's not about competition,

nor of a lesser evil,

but you are less alone than me in the face of these three crazy people,

Juan, my father and my mother.

For what?

Why did I not condemn them as you do me?

Why did they kill me?

I am a ridiculous, grotesque being.

I'm eternal shit in the eyes of those who should be my parents,

in the eyes of the one who is my daughter.

You find me unworthy of having collaborated with the enemy.

For having said,

at a dinner you attended, that Juan was a good person.

Yes.

My ambivalence, my ambiguity are there.

I really think that Juan is both a good person

and trash, as you say.

I really think

that my mother is both trash and a good person

and that my father is both trash and a good person,

and that I am the fruit of this trinity.

So an error.

I can't fix

what Amir did to you.

I can't repair the resentment you have for me.

And I'm in the middle,

and I want to cut out my tongue

to force me to be silent,

which would make me die, like a flower that dehydrates.

I've got you, you've got me, by the goatee

The first one to laugh will get a swatter

Oh no, but I just remembered.

You wanted... Damn I heard a hint,

I don't know if you gave it to me directly or...

You wanted me to do something special, right?

No. Damn, I was dreaming, forget it.

Anything!

Yeah, the photos.

My mother and her mother's mother.

My mother and her mother.

My grandmother and her mother. You and your mother.

- Your mother's mother and her mother. - His mother's mother.

- Her mother's mother's mother. - His mother's mother's mother and...

- Me, you and your mother. - From her mother.

his mother's mother's mother.

And mother's mother's mother.

You.

My problem today,

It’s that I don’t fit in there at all.

- I don't exist in there.

- What do you mean? - I do not exist.

We talk about Juan, we talk about Genet, we talk about Semprun, we talk about all that.

Me, I feel like I've been through this

as an accompanist,

but I am not a powerful man who took power over Carole.

I'm not that. Well, I don't feel like that.

Yet she still spent 33 years of her life with me,

so more than half.

But I, if you like, actually, I was absent.

I went through all that, without...

without playing my role.

It takes me back to my own cowardice, it's true, it's true, I know.

- In your family,

men pass by, and God knows if there are any, if they are important.

First, they have children.

But it's really something you wrote

from mother to daughter, from mother to daughter through the generations.

For now, it's just my mother and me

who wrote about it

and I hope to have stopped this kind of matriarchy

which makes men

- are a bit secondary. - A bit secondary.

For several days, I have been writing.

Discipline of isolation, alongside the truth of my solitude.

No doubt I am responsible for it,

but I swore not to complain in these notebooks.

I just read a sentence from Duras on the Internet.

She says :

"I only manage to free myself from myself in two cases:

"by the idea of ​​suicide and by that of writing."

The bitch holds the key.

I still don't have it. At my age.

Yes, but no one before her wrote to her family.

- Around me, yes.

The censorship or the complex lies there.

Carole,

About your book, you told me the other day that you had reread it

and that you found him to be shit.

However, you shouldn't doubt yourself.

For almost a year and a half, I have been putting my retirement papers in order.

I am stunned,

stunned by the number of books and screenplays that didn't come to fruition.

Some perhaps out of injustice,

but others who were downright bad, immature.

I have no bitterness over everything that didn't work out.

That's what made or broke me, I don't know,

but that’s what makes me the way I am.

My life can seem like a series of failures,

but I don't feel like that.

If I had to do it again, I think I would do it again.

I only regret one thing,

it's the incredible lack of confidence in myself

who has pursued me throughout my life

and who, to tell the truth, has not yet let go of me.

And I wouldn't want you to suffer from that.

Because you would be wrong, just like I was wrong.

I don't believe in you blindly, you surprise me every day.

I'm happy when I see that you don't react like me

because I don't want to weigh you down.

When I'm stuck because of you, I don't find it serious.

But if anything about me bothers you, then I'm sick of it.

You see, there is always time,

she takes more and more medication.

She... It's terrible, there's a descent.

It's awful, it's awful.

She let herself...

All her life, your mother wrote that she wanted to die,

like you.

Like her, you received as an inheritance

ownership of the building in which we all lived,

and you sold it.

You invested everything in the stock market. The stock market collapsed.

And you lost everything.

I am responsible for my loneliness,

she is terrible to live with.

What keeps me alive? To write.

What luxury. I keep this luxury! That's all I have left.

I've never been fucked up to be like what everyone else is.

Foresighted, efficient, employees, sowing a past that bears fruit,

retirement points,

enriching accumulations in every sense of the word,

maintaining relationships and affinities.

I don't know how to play the game well and that's what excites me.

I'm more of a Penelope who never stops questioning the day before

and undoes every second.

So, no proof of what I thought I was building

until proven by 9

through the attitude of my children who run away from me.

Even my love for them is not credible.

I'm looking for work, you don't have any...

And what kind?

Anything because there you go... Worries.

Yes, but what are you in?

I don’t know. I know how to write,

I know how to take photos and everything.

And in fact, I'm still nearby...

I never really... So I got through it until now,

you see, I don't really have a job.

Yes but when you found it, what kind was it?

I was a still photographer. I was a Negro.

But I've always done what I wanted.

That, I trust you!

And I took care of my children.

How old are they?

Um... 25 and 30.

Ah! And then, the relationships with them?

They haven't killed you yet, that's one thing!

They haven't killed me yet, but I feel like they want to!

- Ah yes, that’s normal! - There you go.

Hello? Yes?

OK, goodbye.

I think of what Stevenson said

about a man who wrote and who was an annuitant after an inheritance

and who knew that buying a cigar took a few minutes of his life,

until the day he had nothing left.

Afterwards, he knew, he would commit suicide.

It was just a few sentences that I read, I think, two years ago.

And I wonder if this bet is not the right one.

It is called...

be fed up.

And one evening, at your very large library,

you hanged yourself.

Sit there.

Count your fingers.

What else?

What else is there to do?

And I know how you feel,

I know you feel that you're through.

Ah, sit there.

Count, ah, count your little fingers.

My unhappy -

Oh, little girl, little girl blue

It's finished,

go to bed!