And if this new book was just an excuse to indulge in one of its favorite activities, digression? At the end of the line from her very dear hollow, secret garden where the actress takes refuge with happiness – “Did you know the story of the masons of the Creuse?” It’s amazing, right? »» – Anny Duperey jumps lightly from one subject to another, from one memory to another, leading the conversation as we read her new work. “Breathe is iodine!” »»said her grandmother to the young Rouennaise staying in Dieppe, in a first chapter which gives his name to the book. A first “Free evocation”a first “Bulk memory” paying tribute to women who raised the young orphan after the death of her parents, poisoned with carbon monoxide one day in November 1955. She will draw almost forty years later, as we know, an overwhelming Black sailAutobiography Resilient illustrated by his father, photographer Lucien Legras.
A book born from a small collection of sentences
“These sentences came to me and I started to build my little collection. I have an excellent hearing memory “slips Anny Duperey to explain the genesis of this seventeenth book, which she first wanted to play, as if to resist a period “So appalling”. No memories therefore, a «Fatal exercise» for the writer, but a walk in which the reader meets Jacques Demy and his “Meditative toad”the director Agnès Varda, the king of the transformist cabaret Michou, with whom the actress rides each evening, fascinated by the travesty mechanics, but also Jean-Pierre Marielle, Barbara or Joséphine Baker. The face-to-face between the young actress and her elder, during a promotion tour of French cinema in Northern Europe, is the occasion for a masterclass of anti-racism by the pantheonized resistant. “Have you seen this cartoon of Mr. Disney”asks Joséphine Baker, before explaining to her interlocutor how the stereotypes targeting the African-American community pollute The Jungle Book.
“Writing” Memoirs “seems to me a fatal exercise,” smiles Anny Duperey.
© (Photo, edition of the Seuil)
Anny Duperey’s grandfather was a projectionist at the L’Omnia de Rouen cinema. His father, photographer. Is it this link to the image that has shaped, in such a particular way, the memory of the actress and her writing? “For a previous bookCats of chance, I wanted to talk about a specific experience I had with my daughter (actress Sara Giraudeau)on the death of a cat. I then thought of the cats of my childhood, these cats that my grandmother collected. There were full of the house, recalls Anny Duperey. And suddenly I experienced something extraordinary: I had an inner film. Sitting in my bed, eyes open, I saw the neighborhood of my childhood. The Martainville district and all its cats. I saw one on the edge of a window and I recognized the garden and the workshop of my grandfather. But as soon as I was trying to turn around to see the house, I couldn’t. These images were imposed on me. The camera did not move freely. »»
The theater, a house
The pages devoted to the theater, numerous, also remind us how much Anny Duperey, so well served by television with the series A great familyis at home on a stage. Faced with spectators, she reaffirms her desire and manifests, each evening, a willing will of “Ash falls” of this « catastrophe » that was the death of his parents. At 13, she throws herself under a car. “We check that we have the right to be there”she just said survivors. “I still have a scar on the side of the head. But we didn’t want me up there, it’s clear! From there, nothing could stop stopping me anymore. »»
“Breathe is iodine!” And other free evocations ”, by Anny Duperey, at the Editions du Seuil, € 19.90. The writer will be at the Châteauroux book fair on April 25 to 26.
