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NOTEBOOKS
DEATH CERTIFICATE
63-YEAR-OLD FEMALE
DEATH REGISTERED
SUSPECTED SUICIDE BY HANGING
I'VE STARTED WRITING AGAIN, WHICH IS WHY... I DON'T KNOW WHERE I'M GOING.
WHO WILL READ WHAT I'VE WRITTEN IN THE DEPTHS OF THIS FOLDER
AMONG ALL THE OTHER FILES
WHY IS THERE ALWAYS THIS HOPE OF BEING UNDERSTOOD AFTER MY DEATH?
FOUND AND SAVED.
What can I say that I haven't already said, or that...
I want you to get to the end of this work and get rid of it.
Why, Dad?
Your mom never managed to get rid of it.
So, yes.
And I think that...
basically, I don't think your future is in this, it's elsewhere.
You're dragging crates that you don't need to drag.
Your mum dragged them around all her life.
That's what drove her crazy.
And I think your future, your strength, and your energy lie elsewhere.
They lie with your kids, your work, with the people around you,
and not in a desperate attempt to understand something
that's incomprehensible, because it's absurd.
Shit.
At the moment, I am mostly working on...
what I call my genesis, before me.
You were writing.
DAUGHTER OF
Your last book speaks only of your own mother, also a writer.
THE PLANE TREES
My mother is still an incredible character.
For this book, you recorded your conversations
with the surviving witnesses from your childhood.
You went through your mother's correspondence,
sorted through thousands of photos in crates.
You read her notebooks.
You copied all the notes
she had written in the small diaries kept in this suitcase.
I TELL CAROLE THAT SHE'S TOO CLOSED OFF WITH ME.
SHE'LL BE BLOCKED IN HER WRITING.
You archived everything, your writing and your mother's.
Both of your notebooks and manuscripts.
The enigma of your faces
and your voice.
BUT WHO IS CAROLE?
- Hello. - Hello.
Come in.
- Would you like a tea, some water? - No, I have what I need.
This was her desk.
So...
These are her jeans.
Her T-shirt.
I got a cardigan with her scarf.
A matching handbag.
Here you have her diary,
her passport, ID card, social security card.
I have two pairs of glasses. You can tell me which you prefer.
I bought some lenses, since your eyes are blue and hers were brown.
Her perfume.
Here is her watch and some rings.
She always wore this necklace.
A wig.
There's a mirror there if you want while changing.
Pass me your shoes, please.
- What? - Your shoes.
"My mother left me an enigma."
"The story of our relationship."
You're doing exactly what she did. You're investigating your mother.
My grandmother wrote a book about her own mother.
After her mother's death, Carole Achache kept a suitcase
with her mother's diaries haphazardly thrown in.
In them, her mother noted her schedule and quotes reflecting her mood,
as well as the photos of a life.
A life essentially dedicated to books and those who wrote them.
Monique Lange began working at Gallimard in the '50s,
climbing all the rungs of the ladder, daring to start writing herself one day.
I remember this office,
with some whispering about how I sucked, but was funny.
At that time, it was extraordinary. This was the '50s.
We ate in the canteen, all jostling to sit next to Camus.
I knew Genet, who made a great mark on my life.
I knew Marguerite Duras, Violette Leduc.
It was a great, great time.
Carole Achache, now a photographer,
began writing about her family and its secrets in 2008,
with "La plage de Trouville" through the story
of her grandmother's painting, stolen by Nazis during the Occupation.
She is now publishing with Stock "Fille de",
a novel that tenderly and violently describes her mother
and the life she had with her.
An incredibly lucky life spent mixing with artists, intellectuals and writers.
An unfortunate life in which she could not just be a protected child,
listened to, consoled.
A life in which a strange silence settled
in the midst of the incessant, excitable chatter of brilliant adults.
At the same time, I'd like to transpose this kind of... great moment.
- Yes. - Great.
- Yes. - Of this...
Yes, there's the whole personal aspect that's fascinating and...
- Sad. - Yes, sad and fascinating.
- Yes. - For a reader, it's fascinating.
My mother is an incredible character, though.
Listen, the credits, if it were a film.
Well, at times it's a film, but let's forget about cinema.
This book's credits are incredible.
In this manuscript we have, in order of appearance,
Monique Lange, Dyonis Mascolo, Jean Genet...
Of course, we should not rule out the possibility
that I have a particular soft spot for the book
due to the kind image you paint of me.
Growing up where you did, having a mother like yours,
was already somewhat lucky.
And what luck! These were the '50s in Paris.
What Monique Lange was on the right bank,
Marguerite Duras, whom she knew very well, was on the left bank.
We were 25.
This was Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
That's where everything that turned out to be decisive happened
in our youth, in our feelings,
in our beliefs, in our madness.
We had become mad about communism.
We'd say people had the right to decide what their struggle was.
As usual, we didn't write about it.
But no one writes about happiness.
That's how she was at that time, Carole Achache,
politics, literature, discussions, the night drinking and smoking.
And in the middle of that, the kids sort of had to manage.
Yes, and it was obvious that my mother and Duras,
they really wanted us to benefit
from this kind of happiness, as Duras calls it,
from this kind of passion.
And then, you also have to think that when the war was ending,
in this environment,
there was this desire for freedom that was crazy and necessary.
That is to say that many, many people violently turned their backs
on the war, and they went for it.
I think that they were far freer than we were in 1968...
This is the hardest thing I've ever done.
And... There we go. But...
Crazy and necessary. Okay. We're good.
I think that they were far freer than we were in 1968,
they were far braver.
And the kids, well, we had to benefit from all that.
But you also had to adapt, which, for a child, means
not having a childhood, having kind of an adult life at a young age.
I couldn't have known.
I didn't know what another child's life was like.
That's how it is, and it's true, I was very lucky
because it's still great nourishment.
So, we can't really consider early knowledge
to be something harmful.
But basically, there wasn't really any playing at home.
And then also, you had to face, at a very young age,
something now quite commonplace; your father leaving.
I'm full of good advice here, informed like no one else,
and embarrassed to have to write you this letter.
Please destroy it once you've read it.
Increasingly obsessed with what you know, I didn't hold back
when talking to a doctor I hold in high esteem.
Don't be mad, I'm in turmoil with all this.
Number one, why wait two months?
You know you can't hide what's inside you for long.
Number two, there are ways to avoid Switzerland.
If you were here, this could be sorted out easily.
But you, alone, so far from me, I'm feeling more and more like we're kids.
If you could see my face!
A, you come to Alsace to be near me.
I'll be reassured. We'll figure it out.
B, if you think you can do it, you'll use the technique recommended to me.
I think it's essential to avoid surgical intervention
which, even in Switzerland, scares me.
If someone can give you the injections, they're apparently highly effective.
Meanwhile, walking, running, not lying down, etc.
until the moment in which... etc.
It's called Benzoginestril Number 5.
Two vials in a syringe per day for four days
injected into the buttock muscle, four injections of two vials.
On the ninth day, it should come. If it's insufficient, start again.
If all goes well, you won't need a curettage.
That's it. Decide.
My poor darling, I am upset, disgusted, humiliated.
Forgive me, I am panicked. Reply soon.
I'd like us to have a calm month,
in which I make amends to you for this letter.
Jean-Jacques.
Destroy this letter.
C, how long have you been waiting for your latest... season?
CAROLE'S BIRTH
D, I love you.
The surrogate father was a Spaniard.
His name was Juan Goytisolo.
He was a Spanish anti-Franco refugee,
very engaged politically, a writer.
ALL THE MEN WHO MADE A MARK ON MY MOTHER'S LIFE WERE NAMED JEAN.
Want me to remind you?
It's the story of a young girl,
who's desperately in love with a man who doesn't love her.
Only at the end of the book does she discover
that the reason he doesn't love her is because he's gay.
It's been almost a year since I started visiting the Arabs.
It took me a few weeks to face facts.
I found my balance again and grew closer to you.
But I also discovered that I am totally, definitively,
and irreparably gay.
You'll have noticed that since that date our relations have improved.
Although in a different way, I began to love you more than before
and I've reached a kind of happiness that I've never known before.
I felt relaxed,
happy to share my life with you, and to have you and Carole beside me.
JUAN COMES HOME DRUNK AFTER SCREWING A GUY TWICE
I am currently at an impasse.
I can no longer offer you anything, promise you anything,
I dread your reaction, and secretly also desire it.
JUAN SLEPT WITH AN IDIOT ARAB.
JUAN HAD A QUICKIE WITH AN ALGERIAN.
JUAN SLEPT WITH A TURK.
I know I'm destroying my happiness, which is so strong, to be around you.
JUAN SLEEPS IN HIS OWN ROOM.
I'm scared to live without you.
There's your face, your capacity for love, your eyes, your tenderness.
I've never been this close to anyone.
I have never gone as far in love as I have with you.
From now on,
the success of our relationship depended on our desire to stay together.
The illusion of facing a normal relationship was shipwrecked
and we had to face the challenges to create something new.
But would the love, the understanding, the mutual respect that we had
be enough to maintain the strength of the bonds we considered primordial?
WHEN THEY SAY I WRITE FICTION, I THINK OF AFFLICTION
WHAT TO MAKE UP WHEN EVERYTHING THAT MAKES ME DESPAIR IS ALIVE?
My only question is why? What's with my mother and gays?
You? Genet? And Juan!
I don't know where her taste for gays come from.
It's inexplicable.
Unless it's extreme masochism.
No, but she's a very moving person.
I think she had a difficult life.
Fortunately, she had some kind of fantasy.
But no, she's someone who had a hard life.
She was tragic.
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
But I think that, deep down, she was very happy at Gallimard
because she was placed there,
alongside people who were entirely...
more than tragic.
And basically, she was in the right environment.
She wasn't isolated.
Yeah.
I'm going to read it again.
She says she was frigid...
Before my father.
And then, she was soon cheated on.
And this is a text that she wrote after her operation.
I finally understood, not the condition that she had...
...but that they had removed her uterus.
So, I asked a doctor
because the name she gave was incoherent.
"No, no, no. It was a kind of necrobiosis."
And the text is terrible because she says,
"I ended up losing my uterus..."
"I ended up losing my uterus,
even if it isn't a sex organ because I didn't use it."
"And it took me a week to recover."
"Thank God I had Juan..."
"And it so closely resembled..."
"...this bodily suicide..."
Yes, absolutely.
...that she had.
Listen, I always got the impression there was something unresolved.
It's incredible.
FLO SAYS I USED TO HAVE A CRAZY VITALITY. I'M CALMER NOW.
SHE TELLS ME TO RENOUNCE MY SEXUALITY WHEN CAROLE HAS ONE.
IT'S A REAL FEELING OF GUILT...
There are letters from my adolescence that she had transcribed.
- That means she went through my things. - I don't like that.
No, but it's sexuality by proxy.
But the more we think about, I don't know, Monique's trajectory,
the more we're obliged to think
her sexuality had an awful importance, awful consequences...
Especially with me.
- I mean, this kind of fusional being... - Totally.
She thinks I'm great. I can tell.
My mother's eyes show this passion for me,
no matter what day, what second it is.
Even from behind, when I walk in front, it's an acid burn.
On Rue Montorgeuil, on Sundays, she sells L'Humanité paper to passers-by.
I sit next to her on the steps to a building,
and receive her happiness like a shower of glitter.
She's crazy about me. I'm drunk.
During big dinners, on Rue Poissonnière, all squeezed in tight,
I always feel my mother's gaze on me intermittently
across the table.
I can tell she's proud without even looking.
My seriousness, my gravity,
my mother's smile, and her happiness again.
I am exceptional.
One Thursday, my mother notes,
"Definition of depression by Carole."
"Sadness that's long-lasting if not overcome."
CAROLE TELLS ME ABOUT A REFLECTION AROUND HER EDUCATION
"HER STORY IS THAT OF DESTRUCTURED CHILDHOOD AND HELLO MASOCHISM."
THAT GENET WAS PERVERSE
AND SHE'S NOW DECIDED NOT TO TALK ABOUT IT ANYMORE.
What gave me a little freshness,
was the insecurity.
Genet's inviting me to lunch near his hotel.
I'm proud. So is Monique.
She's so happy that he's interested in me.
We're the two people she loves most in the world, more than Juan even.
Seeing Genet's the best thing that could happen to me.
I can only benefit from his originality.
She thinks it's wonderful. That it's an incredible chance.
And it's true. I feel like he enjoys discovering me.
He laughs with me.
He makes me think in an unusual way.
He helps me to confirm my revolt and not be like others.
He's happy in my presence.
I have gifts that Monique doesn't.
I give him back his taste for life. I'm much funnier than her.
There are moments in which he is as childish as I am.
We're capable of flipping the menu outside a restaurant
or emptying a saltshaker into a vase.
I even had a fling with his lover at the time, Jacky.
I stop by Genet's before leaving.
He still hasn't moved.
He's sat on the bed smoking.
I go to sip water from the tap in the bathroom just behind him.
I don't put the light on and leave the door open.
I get stabbed in the back.
"According to Jacky, you suck at giving head, and you bite."
"I get myself off better."
Sat on the bed, cigar in hand, wearing striped pyjamas,
he tells me that I could never give him a hard-on.
I can. I'm sure of it.
He doesn't give up. "Yes. Go on, try."
He gets up,
and remains standing, exquisitely frozen.
I touch his balls through his trousers.
"See? I was right. No woman can do it for me."
- Are you Monique's only child? - Yes.
- That's incredible. - Why?
No, because when you have an only child, I don't know, you...
It's rare to establish relationships like that. Odd.
Why odd? There were two people in the world that she adored
more than anything, me and Jean.
Right.
So, for her,
that I could be "chosen" by Jean,
because when I was 11.
I'd skip class to go to his hotel and chat.
It's true that...
I was somewhat lucky to have great discussions with him
He soon started playing with me.
He challenged me. "You can't do that."
And so, a little kid with a bit of a soft brain...
is easily manipulated.
I've not managed to decipher everything from the letters you sent my mom.
- You have terrible handwriting. - Thank you!
But you warned my mother on several occasions
that Genet was dangerous.
No, but he was crazy. He was nuts.
A pervert.
Did you know that he hurt me? Genet hurt me.
- Really? - Yeah.
That's why I'm asking you these questions.
But unfortunately, he's someone I don't know.
Your mother was
- taken in by him. - Yeah.
But the more she was hurt, the more she loved people.
So, what can you do?
She got more than she bargained for with Genet.
That's an understatement.
- And... - She sacrificed herself.
She sacrificed herself.
She loved it.
All the people she knew,
it was the chance to sacrifice herself for them.
To be their victim.
Not that people abuse,
but she offered herself as a victim, and so we took advantage of that.
Yeah. She was submissive to the people she loved.
Totally.
And so, it was great.
WE TALKED EVERYTHING OVER.
I'M WORRIED HE'S GETTING BORED AND THINKS I'M STUPID.
JEAN: IS YOUR DAUGHTER STILL SUCH A STUPID BITCH?
That's the ambiguity of Genet, that is that he has...
he's this brilliant person but at the same time very childish.
His round face, his fits of laughter.
So, yes, he hated women.
So, when I saw him a lot, I was quite young.
I was 11, 12, so I was still androgynous.
I think he also really liked me
because I was a bit dark, a bit Arabic looking.
And maybe that reminded him of Abdallah,
the tightrope walker, who had committed suicide by then.
But Abdallah is such an intimate part of my life
that I'd prefer not to talk about him on camera.
I would never forget Abdallah,
the tightrope walker I loved and wanted to marry when I was ten.
Abdallah fell from the top of the rope, without a harness.
Shortly after he got back up, perhaps too quickly,
to repeat an act in front of Genet,
who, though sat down himself, wanted him to go further and further.
Another fall.
Then the doctors' verdict.
Abdallah could no longer take any risks in his thousand-sequined costume
under the big top of any circus.
He had become banal.
There's this word banal, which is omnipresent with Genet.
The whispers I could hear from the adults around me implied a tragedy,
like a chronicle announcing his suicide.
Everyone was worried.
And one day, he hanged himself.
No, I don't want to talk about my pain like that.
- I'd like to make it part of a story. - Yes.
I am still the child
of an intellectual world, and I also wonder about that.
How did they leave me like that? Why?
That's where my pain lies.
And under no circumstances
do I bring you all into my story
to condone anything.
It's just because my question is how could a kid like me,
with such potential,
have had behaviour that was such a remarkable failure?
I am regularly haunted by what I have experienced.
HOW COULD I NOW ADMIT THAT THE IDEA OF SUICIDE CROSSES MY MIND?
IT WOULD EMBARRASS THE PERSON
AND MAKE THEM RESPONSIBLE WHEN I POTENTIALLY DO IT.
Jorge Semprún was also important to the making of this book.
You went to see him to verify certain memories,
and he looked at you, or so it feels,
with a kind of remorse, saying that at one point you'd gone mad.
Mad?
- Not well. - Why not?
When he looks at you... I said mad, it's not that,
but we can tell that he remembers you as a rebelling teenager,
who had started doing crazy things,
that is to say not worrying about having any respect for yourself or your body.
At the same time, wanting freedom,
to show you could be away from your mother.
But at the same time, you were, Carole Achache,
hurting yourself for a while.
I had no choice.
I'll begin my story from my 16th year.
Before, I was sleepwalking, I racked up a huge step count.
And when it came to shaping my personality, it was just a rough draft.
I won't talk about my family, my social origins,
even if Mr Freud explained how everything stems from there.
But in fact, until May '68,
my tribulations were entirely solitary,
except for a few disparate encounters I made just to fuck.
And so, that notorious month of May
brought me into the dream, into reality,
into my reality.
That month of May, a wonderful 16th birthday gift!
It simply allowed me not to disconnect from my revolt,
because the outside world had my colour.
At that time, I expressed my discomfort through politics.
Thinking about it, my activism was bogus.
But I had managed to find some theories,
that perfectly corresponded to my laziness.
To do politics is to not suffer the world.
I'm almost sure I've always wanted to do it my way because of that month.
It's an authorisation that society gave me from that day on.
I am really happy and proud to have experienced a time like that.
I spent the next summer flitting through anarchist groups.
No way could I go back to college.
I moved in with a guy who was a year older than me.
I wanted to live, but I didn't know how.
My intellectual heritage didn't help in that regard.
I got by on only moral references, without letting myself go.
In a way, I came into life
knowing a bit about what not to do, but nothing about what to do.
Everything was fixed in my mind.
Everything crystallised in a perfect ennui,
in a strange sadness.
I began blowing up
because intuitively I could see I was going nowhere.
After a year of austerity, I separated from this boy
and encountered the world of Parisian stoners.
The simple fact that I started getting high
erased many of the intellectual limits that I had set myself.
These were people whose only problem
was being well and, why not, happy in the same day.
They opened up this free world to me.
I was amazed.
I wanted to join their circle, become integrated, accepted.
I wanted to prove I could have fun, that I could be crazier than them.
And this manifested itself in shooting up heroin.
Or by the money I gave them, if they needed any.
A couple I admired couldn't pay their rent.
The next day, by stealing and selling, of course, some of Genet's scripts,
I brought them 600 francs.
Scam!
My God, how that could thrill me.
This word corresponded to a way of reacting against society
by living royally at its expense.
Books of the Pleiades, manuscripts, writers' letters,
even a little drawing by Giacometti. I exhausted the archival capital.
I noticed that I had started to relax physically.
At the same time, I absolutely wanted to be accepted.
It's strange that I always have this gratuitous guilt
that can, at any time,
make me feel rejected or watched.
Having sex was the only way for me to gain the upper hand.
The number of times I've resolved a situation by having sex.
But I couldn't really get used to vegging out.
I forced myself to think like them so I wouldn't be alone.
I was taking a lot of acid at the time.
I freaked out like crazy,
but I thought I had to get past this freaking out by taking some more,
and then some more.
And now, I had only one desire.
To start making something of myself.
And then, I met Jean.
I liked him because he made me laugh. I'd charmed him by cooking.
I sold my latest manuscripts, Genet, Violette Leduc,
to catch a plane that took us to New York.
We totally did not expect the freezing cold of this city.
I was happy, it's true, in the most modern country in the world.
I was happy because I was right.
This country would be mine.
Two hours later, my mood had completely changed.
I was hungry. We were broke.
And worst of all,
I was starting to come down from all the dope I'd taken.
He lived in a nearby hotel.
Around three or four in the morning, this guy came back to bed.
The moron wanted to fuck me, when I was dead tired.
And well, it was ten times more tiring to refuse,
to explain to him that maybe tomorrow I'd be better,
see things more clearly.
It was better for me to spread my legs while dozing off.
The first sordid experience, as soon as I'd arrived. Bam!
We started selling anything valuable left in our suitcases.
I had a few sexual obligations to our landlords, but it was cool.
I wandered around New York every day. It was amazing.
I'd left Paris because I didn't manage to achieve anything in that city.
We think about things too much in Paris.
I wanted a new world in which I could build myself.
I wasn't at all concerned about financial issues.
I'd go out every day with $2 in my pocket.
It was enough for my strolls.
I was looking for encounters.
I had hope in an underground
that had been simmering in the US for two years.
My revolt has been, and always will be, I hope,
the fact that the world of work makes people's daily lives sordid.
But when it comes to work,
there's nobody more sordid than an American.
I wasn't even looking out for myself.
Looking for work would've been shameful to me.
Roselyne suggested I get away from this sordidness
and go and pig out.
The owner of a French restaurant invited us there.
She warned me he was a guy of little interest.
He was a man in his fifties.
Typical nouveau riche, happy with himself.
We went to his table.
We had no interest in the conversation.
I was only thinking of eating and drinking.
It was Roselyne who took care of the fair play side.
A kind of numbness pervaded me due to an excellent wine.
I became lascivious, oblivious to the outside.
My body was warming up from the calories it had long been lacking.
The end of the meal was approaching.
At one point in the conversation, I was picking up on
some "Why don't we head to my studio?" chat.
And that was addressed to me from the boss.
Basically, I was fine.
For me, any experience was to be taken.
And I was a girl who, for a very long time, could never say no.
And the mixture of all the alcohol
had made me rather indifferent to my prejudices.
The boss stood up to work out the final details.
At that point, Roselyne told me something like,
"Don't ask him for any money upfront. He'll give you $20 at the end anyway."
And that sentence disappeared
in my woozy state.
We went to the studio opposite the restaurant.
Things went completely normally,
except there was no looking for a romantic connection.
But that didn't bother me
since it was, unfortunately, not the first time
I'd fucked without making a real human connection.
Half an hour later, it was over.
I know that I came.
A quick wash, get dressed.
And he did indeed give me $20.
Roselyne thought that I had guts,
that she'd found her first time more difficult.
The fog in my head persisted.
We were walking in Manhattan. The air was quite cool.
And I was starting to unwind.
She suggested we spend the afternoon together
as there was an unexpected opportunity to earn $100 each.
Two men on a business trip.
And suddenly, this lump rose in my throat.
I was completely disgusted with myself.
I realised that I had sold myself morally.
Physically, I didn't care.
But all my theories, my rebellion
were cancelled out by what I'd just done.
Selling myself wasn't the problem.
But I had just sullied
the one act in which I thought I was free.
I had just compromised myself with this world that I hated.
In just two hours,
I had erased all of my violence, all of my refusal.
Jean told me
that this was the price we had to pay for our freedom,
that the outlandish party side,
the need for unlimited happiness, came at a high cost.
"The world is ugly, and life is hard." That's what he says.
And that ultimately, it was a very short time to spend
to allow you to live afterwards.
I shouldn't dream.
If we wanted
to get something out of this society to live well,
it had to be done.
That I have no illusions.
It's a precondition to being able to live freely.
Effectively, I had no choice.
I never asked myself how I would manage financially.
I let myself live.
I also had this economic ease thanks to my mother,
who took care of all my needs.
I was entering a strange reality,
that of lies,
of pure compromise and, in a way, of deep disillusionment.
And I went all the way. I became a very good prostitute.
The process was simple.
Go into the best hotel, ask at reception if Mr so-and-so was there,
making a shitty face when given an obviously negative answer,
and finally waiting patiently
in a chair with a clear view of all the comings and goings.
Within half an hour, I'd find someone.
I experienced a real dichotomy.
I had several lives, and I was unable to reconcile them.
But in the end,
it was impossible for me not to incorporate my life as a whore
into my life as the daughter of intellectuals.
If I analyse my attitude during those years,
I can see that I was pursuing a suicidal approach.
I'M DOING THE TERRACE UP. PETUNIAS. NO, CAROLE NOT WHORE LIKE JEAN SAYS.
CAROLE TELLS US THERE'S NO POINT SLEEPING AROUND TO BECOME AN ACTRESS
WHEN YOU CAN MAKE MONEY BY SLEEPING AROUND.
I know some details, but not if they're...
Well?
Well, I don't know, it's what was said at the time.
- I hesitate to tell you, maybe. - No, no.
That Genet pushed you into working the streets.
Oh, no. No.
That's funny. Why...
Someone told me at the time...
I did it eventually.
- Yes. - But it's odd. It's unbelievable.
I did do it, but later. I think that...
And Genet had nothing to do with it?
No, but he was complicit in my relationship with Jacky starting at too young an age.
- Really. - Yes.
My mother was also somewhat complicit because I was only 11, 12, 13.
So, in my opinion, that's premature.
And... But this thing is funny.
The noise was carrying, anyway.
I prostituted myself.
- Which isn't a great thing to do. - No.
- There we go. - Yeah.
But I really thought that it was the work of Jean Genet.
Listen, you wouldn't have done it if Jean hadn't been around.
Well, I don't know...
I totally agree.
Why are you saying that? I totally agree, but it's...
Because he had a taste for challenging people,
for challenging them,
pushing them as far as he could into their "contradictions",
which were his fantasies.
In this sense, he pushed Abdallah to the extent he pushed him.
He pushed Jacky.
He broke people doing it, throughout his life.
He broke me when I was a kid really.
It's one of the reasons I went off the rails.
- Yes, of course. - Right.
Could my mother have been aware of it?
That Genet would've put me... I mean, it's serious.
I don't know. I can't say for sure really.
No, it didn't happen directly, but there were...
by dint of highlighting theft, delinquency, and all that.
I didn't know what to do but that.
- I know. He was a manipulator too. - Totally.
But why did my mother leave me in his hands?
It must've been her passion for Genet. She would've agreed to anything.
- Really, anything. It's crazy. - Yeah.
So, it's my ambivalence.
It's the grudge I hold against Genet. I mean, he's disgusting.
- Yeah, that's for sure... - Right.
And at the same time, I know that I had...
that I may have a form of intelligence that was shaped by Jean.
- Yes. - Yes, right.
And it's true that in the middle of all this,
my mother plays an odd role.
Yes, the mother-daughter relationship in these cases is...
Yes, this one's staggering.
- Yeah. - It is.
"TO LIVE IS TO SURVIVE A DEAD CHILD." JEAN GENET
FINISH FLAGYL. START AMPHOCYCLINE. LAMB WITH BEANS. I FART ALL NIGHT.
I was not understood.
They were writers, male or female,
I always put men before women because I love them.
That's how it is. It's carnal.
They enter me. I can feel them filling me.
It doesn't last long.
It last so little time
that I haven't continued getting filled up like that.
It reminded me too much of my emptiness.
It's not hard for me to tell myself right now
that I'm an eternally incapable piece of shit.
Four, three, two, one.
François Mitterrand's been elected President of France.
SILENCE = DEATH
GENET ABOUT CAROLE THE OTHER DAY:
SHE'S LIKE POLICE CARS, SHE'S GOING UNDERCOVER
Two, three...
Happy birthday
Happy birthday, dear Mona
Happy birthday to you
It's no coincidence that I stayed with the father of my children for 30 years.
Finding a balance by tidying up my house,
sweeping away so much dust.
This need for the outside to be organised,
because I feel so disfigured inside,
referring to the severity in opposition to anything I have experienced.
Have I been too conformist in appearance to compensate for my lack of references?
Yes, one day, you caught your finger. You really hurt yourself.
You cried. Oops!
Because you should just pull a drawer out like this.
Don't put your hands like this. Take the handle.
There you go. Well done! You got it.
That's how you have to do it so you won't hurt yourself.
Do you think conformism is a nasty disease?
It's a miserable disease.
Why is it a miserable disease?
Because it prevents you from existing.
People who are truly conformist have not lived.
Possessions make one conformist, the accumulation of goods, of wealth.
Throughout life, we get attached to objects, memories, photos.
It's not malicious. You must be able to go without.
- But you don't here. There are... - Of course there are.
- But the day there no longer is... - It won't matter?
There's a wonderful Cocteau quote I used in one of my books,
"What would you take if your house were burning? The fire."
- Nice. - Very nice.
I'll continue the comic book.
My mother made a lot of noise when drinking her morning tea.
Oh, I thought we were taking a quick break.
No.
She'd hold her sip in her mouth, and then swallow.
- I hated that noise. - So, why recreate it?
Happy birthday to you
MONA HAS ECZEMA AGAIN.
CAROLE: THAT'S HER PROBLEM.
You often told me an anecdote that you were strangely proud of.
You were one.
I laid you down on your changing table to change your nappy.
I confused the bottle of saline solution with 90% alcohol and put it in your eyes.
You started screaming.
When I realised my mistake,
I took the bottle of alcohol and put some in my eyes too.
To feel the same pain you did.
Why this transmission of pain?
You soon told me that your mother had been gang raped
during a bullfight on the streets of Pamplona.
This story is part of my childhood.
From your mouth, Pamplona sounded like a mythological tale.
Just like Hera throwing Hephaestus out of the window because of her ugliness,
there was Penelope, who undid at night what she had woven by day,
and Momo, who was gang raped
during a bullfight on the streets of Pamplona.
From a young age, this singsongy word
mixed with verbose images of a bloodied bull,
young boys assaulting my young grandmother in Spanish alleyways,
Left strange and romantic impressions on me.
The spectre of the abuse you suffered hung over my childhood
in a more insidious way, so much so that I now realise
I grew up with the unspoken idea it would happen to me.
That it always happened.
And that it wasn't really a tragedy, but an inevitability.
An inevitable initiatory rite.
From my childhood, I've retained the happy memory
of our stays in Juan's Marrakech house, where he spends 50% of his time.
At 13, I found out about Juan's homosexuality
and I better understood who Amir is. Amir who I've known forever,
who lives in the house with his brother and his family.
JUAN LIVES LIKE A SULTAN. AMIR DREAM SLAVE.
THE WOMEN PEEL AND SWEEP.
In the heart of the medina, this timeless happiness
was inherent in Amir's servitude for Juan and, by extension, for us.
I TRIED TO EXPLAIN MY MARRAKECH TORMENT TO JUAN.
Obviously, I loved this Moroccan part of my childhood.
I loved my grandfather, and vice versa.
But at 14, during one of our trips to Morocco,
Amir started coming into my room every night, and I was unable to say no.
I tell you about it, you collapse
and tell me that you knew it would happen to me,
that it had happened to you too.
As women are cursed in our family.
Later, Juan chose the comfort of maintaining his Moroccan life with Amir
to the detriment of my confessions,
suggesting I envelop myself in your silence.
TRY NOW TO FORGET
I don't forget and I cut ties with Juan on behalf of those he maintains with Amir.
But I soon discover you're reproducing the ambiguities of your own mother.
You're unable to sacrifice the privilege of your relationship with Juan
due to the abuse your daughter suffered.
Mona, you told Juan some home truths,
so you liberated yourself somewhat, right?
And haven't I, a former whore, come a long way?
You find my contact with Juan despicable.
As if I were denying what happened to you.
I told you that you shouldn't confuse Amir with Juan.
But actually, I was speechless again
because Juan's attitude towards you is zero.
And I am in the middle, in my eternal silence,
having given all my strength to structuring my children.
And I am in the middle, having had a past
that all three of mine dismissed;
my dad, my mom, and Juan.
A sinister trinity that prevented me from causing a ruckus.
I'm the middle and I am fed up with being nothing.
A piece of shit in your eyes.
A good-for-nothing who collaborated with the enemy.
And I'm in the middle, having been subjected to events
that I consider more serious than those you've experienced.
It is not a matter of competition,
nor of lesser evil,
but you are less alone than I was when faced with three crazy people,
Juan, my father and my mother.
Why? Why did I not condemn them as you do me?
Why did they kill me?
I am a ridiculous, grotesque person.
I am an eternal piece of shit
in the eyes of those who are meant to be my parents,
in the eyes of my daughter.
You find me unworthy for having collaborated with the enemy.
For saying, during a dinner you attended, that Juan was a good person.
Yes,
I do demonstrate ambivalence and ambiguity.
I really do think
that Juan is both a good person and a swine, as you say.
I really do think
that my mother is both a swine and a good person,
and that my father is both a swine and a good person.
And I am the fruit of this trinity,
therefore a mistake.
I cannot fix what Amir did to you.
I cannot fix
the resentment you are holding for me.
And I am in the middle.
I want to cut out my tongue
to force myself to be silent,
which would make me die,
like a dehydrated flower.
I've got you by the chin. You've got me by the chin.
The first to laugh gets a tap on the shin!
Ah no, I just remembered.
You wanted... Damn, I heard an indication.
I don't know if you gave it to me directly or...
You wanted me to do something special, right?
Damn, no. I was dreaming, forget it.
Whatever!
Yeah, the photos.
- My mum and her mum. - My grandma and her mum.
- You and your mum. - Your mum's mum and her mum.
- Her mum's mum. - Her mum's mum's mum.
- Me, you. Her mom's mum.
Her mum's mum's mum.
- Her mum's mum's mum. - You.
- And her mum's mum's mum. - You.
My problem today is that I don't fit in there at all.
I don't exist there.
- How so? - I don't exist there.
We're talking about Juan, about Genet, about Semprún, all that.
I feel like I was swept along in all this.
I am not a powerful man
who overpowered Carole.
I am not that. At least, I don't think I am.
Yet she still spent 33 years of her life with me, so over half.
But I, if you like, was actually absent.
I went through all this without...
without playing my role.
It reminds me of my own cowardice, it's true.
I know.
In your family, men pass, and God knows if they're important.
First, they make children.
But it's really something
that you wrote, mother to daughter, mother to daughter,
through the generations.
For now, only my mother and I wrote about it.
And I hope to have put an end to precisely this kind of matriarchy
that makes men somewhat secondary.
I've been writing for days.
Discipline of isolation, alongside the truth of my loneliness.
No doubt I'm responsible for it,
but I vowed not to complain in these notebooks.
I just read a Duras quote online.
She says, "Only the idea of two things can free me from myself,
the idea of suicide and the idea of writing."
The bitch, she holds the key.
I still don't have it. At my age.
Yes, but no one in her family wrote before her.
Around me, they did.
That's where censorship or the complex lies.
INTERESTING, BUT...
WE'RE SORRY...
A RATHER VAGUE STORY...
WEAKEST...
WITH REGRET...
MISSED THE POINT...
UNFORTUNATELY...
THIS BOOK HAS NO...
UNFORTUNATELY...
WITH MY REGRET AND CONSIDERATION...
Carole, with regards to your book,
you told me the other day you reread it and found it crap.
Don't doubt yourself.
For 18 months, I've been preparing for my retirement.
I'm flabbergasted,
bewildered by the number of unsuccessful books and screenplays.
Some perhaps due to injustice, but others were downright bad, immature.
I am not bitter about all those that did not succeed.
It is what made me, or what undid me, I don't know,
but it's what made me who I am.
My life may seem like a series of failures.
I don't see it that way.
If I had to do it all again, I think I would.
I regret only one thing;
the incredible lack of self-confidence that has pervaded my life
and, to be honest, still does.
I don't want you to suffer that.
As you would be wrong to, like I was wrong.
I do not believe in you blindly. You amaze me daily.
I'm glad to see you don't react like me. I don't want to weigh you down.
When I am stuck because of you, it's no big deal.
But if anything's bothering you, it makes me sick.
MONUMENTAL BLOW WITH REGARDS TO MY WORK.
ALMOST WANT TO DIE (NOT LIVE ANYMORE).
BLUE BLUE DEPRESSED. IT'S HARD TO WRITE. EASIER THAN TO DIE.
SHE CAN'T ANYMORE. IT'S RIGHT HERE ON PAPER.
She's taking more and more medication.
It's terrible. A deterioration.
It's awful. It's really awful.
She's let herself...
SHE CAN'T TAKE ANYMORE.
MY DEATH WOULD HAVE NO MORE MEANING THAN MY LIFE... I WANT TO DIE.
Her whole life, your mother wrote about wanting to die.
Just like you.
Like her, you inherited ownership of the building we all lived in,
and you sold it.
You put everything into the stock market.
It collapsed, and you lost everything.
I am responsible for my solitude. It is unbearable.
What keeps me alive? Writing. What a luxury!
I will hold on to this luxury. It is all I have left.
I have never cared about being like other people.
Foresighted, efficient, employees,
sowing a fruitful past, retirement points,
enriching accumulations in every sense of the word,
maintaining relationships, affinities.
I don't know how to play the game well. That excites me.
I'm a Penelope,
who never stops questioning the day before, unravelling every second.
Suddenly, no proof of what I'd thought to build up
until proof came through the attitude of my children fleeing from me.
Even my love for them is not credible.
I'm looking for a job at the moment. Do you have anything?
In what field?
Anything, because, you know... worries.
Yeah.
What are you into?
I don't know. I can write. I can take photos.
But actually, I'm always beside... I've never really...
So, I've gotten by so far, but I don't really have a job.
When you found it, what kind was it?
I was a set photographer.
I was a ghost writer.
- But I've always done what I wanted. - Yeah!
I trust you on that!
Then I was raising my kids.
- How old are they? - They're 25 and 30.
And you have a good relationship?
They've not killed you yet, that's not bad!
- Not yet, but they want to sometimes. - Yes, that's normal.
I think about what Stevenson said about a man who wrote
and was independently wealthy due to an inheritance.
He knew that by buying a cigar, he was shaving a few minutes of his life,
until the day he'd have none left.
Afterwards, he knew that he would commit suicide.
I only read a few sentences two years ago, I think.
And I wonder if this bet may be the right one.
It's called being fed up.
And one night, from your large bookcase,
you hanged yourself.