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On the other side of the border, an American black novel by Berthet and Fromental

2020-03-31T06:13:00.943Z


COMIC STRIP OF THE DAY - During confinement, there's nothing like getting away from it all with comics. Loosely inspired by the American experience of Georges Simenon, here is a very elegant thriller with a perfectly successful murky atmosphere.


The American novel and noir films have always fascinated comic book authors. The proof in pictures thanks to the new album by Philippe Berthet and Jean-Luc Fromental: On the other side of the border .

The atmosphere of this thriller may be open to the four burning winds of Arizona, on the edge of the Mexican border, but it remains confined within a very small perimeter. A bit like in the film of Orson Welles The Thirst for Evil ("Touch of Evil"), with Charlton Heston.

In the heart of this post-war America, in 1948, a successful French-speaking writer François Combe (who is reminiscent of Georges Simenon) settled with his wife and his mistress in a strange no man's land: the Santa Cruz Valley, playground for the rich and powerful.

Moist eroticism

Soon, we find a young Mexican prostitute murdered in atrocious conditions in an establishment in the red light districts of Nogales, a border town between Mexico and the USA.

Quickly, suspicion turned to one of the wealthy aristocrats in the valley named Jed Peterson, who slept with her a few hours before she was brutally stabbed. The local authorities are also interested in the writer, who had rubbed shoulders with the young victim the same day of his death ...

Here is the perfect cocktail for a thriller in murky waters, mixed with moist eroticism, and a plunge into the depths of the human soul perverted by alcohol, envy and the spirit of revenge.

A tense and unequal atmosphere

And to serve this sweet blend, the designer of the Pin-Up series , of On the Road to Selma and the Hollywood Private can get along perfectly. Sensuality, elegance, and power of the line: Philippe Berthet's drawing works wonders by illustrating the tormented scenario concocted by Fromental.

Berthet's style is in balance between the classic American style (we think of Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff or Will Eisner), and the Franco-Belgian "clear line" created by Hergé, then taken up by Yves Chaland or Floch ' .

This high-flying thriller also brilliantly reflects the tense and unequal atmosphere that reigns in this Eldorado of rich and decadent America, shamelessly rubbing shoulders with the poor Mexicans of Nogales, condemned to observe opulence without being able to take part in it, crowded in poor neighborhoods across the border.

A dark and languid thriller

Fromental explains it very well, for him, the Santa Cruz valley became at that time "a sort of park for the wealthy, where people from Hollywood and the east coast came to hide their turpitudes."

It is at the center of this nest of rattlesnakes that the interior of this rather sumptuous graphic novel takes place, where a writer fascinated by crime and human nature is transformed into a detective to exonerate his friend, while murders are multiplying. two sides of the border ...

A dark and languid thriller that Simenon would certainly not have denied.

On the other side of the border , by Philippe Berthet and Jean-Luc Fromental, 78 p., Published by Dargaud. € 15.99.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2020-03-31

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