Odette, Domenico, Roger, Claudie, Jacques… They are all there, in a cinema from another time, eager to discover how their grandson and nephew told them. Marie-Do, his mother, came too. Christophe comments on the images that the public, if he were placed alongside the characters, might have seen: Odette sketches a sign of the cross under the bombings that gutted Nantes in 1943, little Roger contemplates the ladybugs in the cemetery where his father rests. “Where did you get that I was looking at the ladybugs?” », protests Roger. And the others in turn add their grain of salt, going from their recriminations and their version of the story.
The session is cut short. The film, in any case, does not exist, ends up letting go of Christophe Honoré’s scenic double in a delicate mise en abyme of the filmmaker’s own quest. He would have liked to bring the Puigs, his mother’s incredible family, back to life on the screen, but did not succeed. Ghosts are not easily captured on film: they need breath, movement, bodies to cross… This is why they like the theater so much, this realm of the moment where nothing separates them from living.
Intimate tribute to the “crazy people of Nantes”
On stage, Christophe Honoré orchestrates a caustic family reunion around Odette, known as “Kiki” or “Grandma”, who gave birth to no less than ten children including Roger, Claudie, Jacques and Marie-Do. All of them, with the exception of Marie-Do, are long dead and seem happy to be reunited, complimenting each other on their ” looking good “ dead people and untangle the skein of their common past. Domenico Puig, the Spanish father, hangs around but nobody wants to see him: too many wounds, too much suffering sown behind him.
Undermined by violence, disease and depression, the fate of the Puigs presented all the ingredients of a Greek tragedy. However, Christophe Honoré draws another dimension cradled in tenderness and humanity, where the piece finds all its depth. He uproots his characters from the sheer weight of misfortune and summons them as they inhabit his memory. Beings of flesh and feelings that he does not reduce to the sad vagaries of their existence, reserving there without doubt the most beautiful declaration of love for these “crazy Nantes” to which, he confides, he always felt he belonged.
A prodigious cast embodies, with total commitment, this extravagant family. Youssouf Abi-Ayad, the director’s magnificent double, deploys the palette of raw sensitivity, while Chiara Mastroianni, for her first steps in the theatre, is overwhelming in the role of the fragile aunt Claudie. Marlène Saldana is an extraordinary Kiki who, despite bereavement and hardships, dances on Sheila and ignites for the Canaries (nickname given to FC Nantes players) in front of football matches with Jacques (Jean-Charles Clichet, perfect in protective wire).
irresistible humor
Stéphane Roger shakes in the skin of this uncle with gaping wounds – the sorrows of childhood, the war in Algeria, his son’s descent into hell. The flamboyant Harrison Arévalo returns to the figure of Puig, the banished, while with great accuracy, Christophe Honoré makes his little brother, Julien, play the role of their mother Marie-Do, the only survivor of this extraordinary sibling.
The public laughs at their invectives, their banter of a bygone era – we enjoy Jacques’ improbable expressions! –, and suddenly, without even noticing, switches to the side of tears. In a perfect mastery of time and space, the flowing writing distils an irresistible humor which constantly competes with the most subtle emotions. A grace that also guides the staging.
In this nostalgic decor, signed Mathieu Lorry-Dupuy, Christophe Honoré recreates in the background “Granny’s HLM”its frog-shaped ashtray, its “mazagrans” for the coffee. The soundscape of his youth also resounds: a telephone with an ominous ringtone, the songs, bubbles of echoes to the secret march of hearts. Carrying ours along the way, Honoré opens wide his own in this intense Sky of Nantes. Beyond the pain, the outline of a possible reconciliation between past and present.
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Christophe Honoré at the theater
successful filmmaker (Love songs, Room 212etc.), Christophe Honoré has written several plays, including Beginners, and 1998, et Beautiful Guys in 2004.
In 2009he signed, for the Festival d’Avignon, the staging ofAngelo, tyrant of Paduaby Victor Hugo.
in 2018he writes and directs The Idolsin an autobiographical vein that he continues with The Sky of Nantes.
in 2020he goes to the Comédie-Française The Side of Guermantesinspired by the work of Marcel Proust.
