the essential
With Ovidie, ex-porn star, writer, journalist and documentary director, the Marathon des mots welcomed prose that was as feminist and radical as it was funny and original. A very nice meeting.
On Wednesday evening, the l’Autre Rive bookstore had a full house to welcome Ovidie, an indisputable sign that strong and militant literature has its place at the Marathon des mots. “All the seats have been reserved for three weeks and we could have had 200 people,” rejoiced François-Xavier Schmit, the owner of this wonderful bookstore in the Saint-Cyprien district.
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A hilarious photo novel
The audience had come to hear the author and writer of podcasts and documentaries that are as offbeat as they are relevant, and no allusion to her past as an X-rated film actress came to spoil the very warm and respectful atmosphere. Smiling and lively, Ovidie speaks frankly and her language goes from literary phrases to expressions that are very much in tune with the times – which she probably heard at university, where she works regularly. This famous zeitgeist that she knows how to grasp like few others by intelligently pinning down the sexist and old-fashioned failings that persist here and there.
She twists their necks, in her hilarious photo novel, with a very 70s aesthetic “The Prince Charming factory – worst scam since the invention of the jacuzzi”, produced with Marie-Sophie Larrouy from old and astonishing maps Italian postal services. “A secret treasure,” she smiles when we ask her the origin of these very improbable photos. I love diversions, like this crazy film “Can dialectics break bricks?”, in which karatekas confront each other while chatting about Marx and Bakunin! I like to inject politics into a pop work. This Prince Charming, whom I called Jean-Michel Déconstructed, is neither a hunk nor a macho man: he is someone who thinks he knows better than us what feminism is!”
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“Ovidie is a free woman who has experienced things and created rich and varied works from them,” observes Karine, a woman from Toulouse who lives nearby and was, like many, seduced by the clarity and benevolence of Ovid’s discourse.
“Take the dog!”
She expresses this benevolence – oh so much – in the formidable “Sitting, standing, lying down!” (JC Lattès editions) in which she expresses all her love for dogs. With a lump in her throat, she speaks in front of an emotional audience about the death of her dear Raziel: “I simply lost a friend. He didn’t judge me, had total confidence in me. We don’t accompany dog mourning – and I would have needed psychological and medicinal support.” The love of the doggie is not foreign to Ovidie’s feminist action and thought: “At the end of the 19th century, experiments were carried out on dogs and women, considered physically inferior. Very early on, the The animal cause has been embraced by women and, if you go to animal shelters, it’s women you’ll see the most.” This canine passion goes back a long way: “When I was little, I was told: “Take the dog”, not: “Beware of predators.” I took the dog and encountered no problem in my walks in the forest. Even today, I take the dog and am never attacked.”
“I love the fluidity and clarity of her words: she knows how to unite around very current and serious concepts with a lot of intelligence,” concludes, with stars in her eyes, Lucile, another Toulouse resident and ex-bookseller, with whom Ovidie, as with everyone who hands him a book to sign, will engage in a short but warm discussion. A beautiful person, certainly.
