Mélissa Da Costa, 34, remained in 2024 the most read novelist in France, dethroning Guillaume Musso for the second consecutive year. This success, she owes it first to her first novel All the blue of the skypublished in 2019, which was a dazzling success. Sold in more than a million copies, his bestseller is now suitable for television: it is broadcast this Monday evening on TF1 and will also be available on Netflix.
A motorhome road trip to the Pyrenees
Originally planned as a series, the adaptation was made in the form of a film. We follow Émile (interpreted by Hugo Becker, seen in At the service of France, GossipGirl or I promise you), which has just learned that it has an early form of Alzheimer’s and that he only has a few months left to live.
To flee this reality, he leaves with Joanne (Camille Lou, seen in Cat’s Eyes, The bazaar of charity, I promise you), who responded to his announcement, for a road trip aboard a motorhome. Black hat, not very smiling, Joanne is described as “closed but sweet” by Camille Lou.
Together, they embark aboard a retro Volkswagen combi and cut the road to the Pyrenees, trying to escape their past and their injuries. “We have all asked ourselves the question of: what’s going on if tomorrow, do we give up?” “Says Hugo Becker, explaining that he also” lived the road trip “thanks to this shooting.
“We want to live” after reading it (or seen)
Émile, a talkative and playful character, who has decided to eclipse his illness, will succeed in unraveling the shell in which Joanne locked himself up, not very talkative and always dressed in black. “All readers who have read the book have the image of these large, very loose black clothes in which it disappears. And this hat… ”, says Mélissa da Costa.
-The story between the two characters, although romanticized, is necessarily touching and pushes for reflection. “When you finish it [le livre Tout le bleu du ciel, NDLR]we want to live, do things, travel, create stronger ties, not miss out on his life, “says the actor, who has, like Camille Lou, read the book for S ‘Impregnate characters, since the story had to be shortened to be adapted to the screen.
A first for the author
It is the first time that Mélissa da Costa’s novel has been adapted in film. The screenwriter, Claire Lemaréchal, explains that she was forced to “remove the flashbacks”. But the author, who participated from afar in this adaptation, is satisfied with this filmed version: “I let it clear and I dropped taken from this project. An author always has trouble letting go of his work and I don’t know how to write for cinema, ”she says.
She even had fun having a small role in the film. She acknowledges having been seduced by the cast and the “energy of the characters” they give off. A first experience that convinced Mélissa da Costa. And who will not remain without tomorrow since the rights for his book Women at the end of the world were bought.
All the blue of the skyAccording to a novel by Mélissa Da Costa, this Monday, January 27, from 9:10 p.m., on TF1.
