Mélissa Da Costa, 34, remained the most read novelist in France in 2024, dethroning Guillaume Musso for the second consecutive year. She owes this success primarily to her first novel. All the blue of the skypublished in 2019, which was a dazzling success. Sold more than a million copies, his best-seller is now adapted 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 into a film. We follow Émile (played by Hugo Becker, seen in In the Service of France, GossipGirl or I promise you), who has just learned that he has a form of early-onset Alzheimer’s and that he only has a few months left to live.
To escape this reality, he leaves with Joanne (Camille Lou, seen in Cat’s Eyes, The Charity Bazaar, I promise you), who responded to his ad, for a road trip aboard a motorhome. Black hat, not very smiling, Joanne is described as “closed but gentle” by Camille Lou.
Together, they board a retro Volkswagen van and head towards the Pyrenees, trying to escape their past and their wounds. “We have all already asked ourselves the question: what happens if we leave tomorrow? » confides Hugo Becker, explaining that he also “experienced the road trip” thanks to this filming.
“We want to live” after reading (or seeing) it
Émile, a talkative and cheerful character, who has decided to eclipse his illness, will succeed in breaking through the shell in which Joanne, of few words and always dressed in black, has locked herself. “All readers who have read the book have the image of these large, very loose black clothes in which she disappears. And this hat…” says Mélissa Da Costa.
-The story between the two characters, although romanticized, is necessarily touching and thought-provoking. “When we finish it [le livre Tout le bleu du ciel, NDLR]we want to live, to do things, to travel, to create stronger bonds, not to miss out on our life,” confides the actor, who, like Camille Lou, read the book to s ‘imbue the characters, since the story had to be shortened to be adapted for the screen.
A first for the author
This is the first time that a novel by Mélissa Da Costa has been adapted into a 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 Claire do it and I let go of this project. An author always finds it difficult to let go of his work and I don’t know how to write for the cinema,” she says.
She even had fun having a small role in the film. She admits to having been seduced by the casting and “the energy of the characters” that they exude. A first experience which convinced Mélissa Da Costa. And which will not remain without future since the rights for his book Women at the End of the World were purchased.
All the blue of the skybased on a novel by Mélissa Da Costa, this Monday January 27, from 9:10 p.m., on TF1.
