France Inter had promised a “luchiniesque” moment, and it kept its word. This Sunday, Fabrice Luchini inaugurated his new slot on the public station, called “Les admirations littéraires”. Scheduled at 7:20 p.m., a time slot occupied last season by “Le grand dimanche soir” (6 p.m. – 8 p.m.) by Charline Vanhoenacker, this new show aims to make listeners want to devour books.
How? By giving the actor carte blanche for 40 minutes to read the works, known or not, of his literary pantheon. Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, Saint-Simon or Nietzsche will parade, the host then explaining why these texts are important to him.
“I don’t like super positive authors”
Opening with a piece by Bach, this Sunday’s meeting certainly does not respect the usual codes of radio broadcasts. Without saying hello to the listeners, Fabrice Luchini began by discussing the conditions of his arrival at France Inter. “When Adèle Van Reeth (the station’s boss) suggested that I read for a few weeks, I said to myself: You are offering me a funny thing because I rather like, not depressives, but I don’t like super positive ones. ” he monologued. Before going off into a list of authors that finally brought him back to his original idea: “She convinced me.”
For this first, the man of the theatre chose to put the spotlight on portrait painters. Praising their ability to “capture the core” of men behind their “social self”, he quickly embarked on a quote from Louis-Ferdinand Céline, before announcing that he would devote himself this Sunday to the work of Jean Cau. A writer and secretary to Jean-Paul Sartre, the latter is, according to the host, “one of the greatest portrait painters of the 20th century”.
After briefly introducing him – “I think his mother was a cleaning lady” – Fabrice Luchini then performed his texts for about twenty minutes, bringing Gaston Gallimard, Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet to life. With his characteristic talent as a storyteller, he took listeners on a winding radio journey off the beaten track. “I’ll see you next week, if there are people who listened, for other portraits,” he simply concluded at the end of this mind-blowing exercise.
