For Stanislas, it's not just an image since a pair of magic boots will soon reduce him to the size of a thumb. He will then discover the disadvantages, but also the advantages of this new condition. And discover that ultimately, the value of a human being, whatever he may be, depends first of all on his actions, and not on his size, even if it is microscopic.
The necessary step aside
“Without revealing anything about the end, he has a sacrificial destiny, relate Zanzim. And that reflects a little the idea that I have of the “great man”: it is not the one who is placed in the light, or acts so that he is noticed, but the one who performs small acts without bring her back, without even paying attention.”
As usual, the French author uses storytelling to achieve this, making his characters take a side step that pushes them into fantasy: “And when you're little, you see things very differently than when you're big. Your view of the world inevitably changes“, confides the one who remembers having also suffered a little from his size: “In high school, I wasn't very tall, I grew up late. It earned me ridicule. And obviously, the girls I liked the most were the taller girls. I was inspired a little by these feelings to build Stanislas.”
So much so that this Big little man necessarily acts a little like “gentle therapy” for the young fifty-year-old (52 years old). A microscopic odyssey during which, like Zanzim in his time, Stanislas will learn to discover women differently, with their good as well as their less good sides: “They don't all have the right role, confirms the French author. They sometimes have a bitchy side. And it’s true that it also corresponds to the image that I have long had of women. And then, I have my children, two girls, and there I fell from a height: I saw that they also liked to fight, and had nothing to envy of boys in many areas.”
Formica fetishist
Lover of women, especially his own, “a feminist“, Zanzim is also from the 60s, in which the action of this Big little man for which he admits to having been inspired by the films of Truffaut (Stanislas looks like Antoine Doinel), Dustin Hoffman of Tootsie and, of course, The shrinking manthis cult film from 1957 in which Grant Williams shrank almost visibly, to the point of soon looking eye to eye with the spiders who had become his predators: “I've always loved this period, it's a form of nostalgia. For example, at home, the decor is 60s bar, Formica, Scandinavian furniture. I got stuck there, I don't know why: I find everything linked to that era much classier, starting with cars..”
