“When you love, it's really great.
What an immersion!
"The exhibition that the Maillol museum (Paris VIIe) devotes from this Thursday to Albert Uderzo has already made a happy: Brigitte Macron, who spent nearly two hours, Wednesday evening, to scrutinize the dozens of boards - in part unpublished - of the designer discreetly disappeared in March 2020 when France was confined.
Read alsoExhibition, comics, films, series ... Asterix continues to inspire new projects
The Indian Oumpah-Pah, the first fruit of the Uderzo / Goscinny tandem before Asterix, whom she discovered as a child while her brothers devoured the albums of Tanguy and Laverdure (Uderzo on the drawing and Jean-Michel Charlier on the screenplay).
And of course the adventures of the famous Gaul for whom she confesses a particular tenderness.
“Asterix is a French myth that says a lot about who we are: resistance fighters.
It's fun to see how these characters stand the test of time.
At home, the Asterix albums are available to my grandchildren.
Young and old alike know very well where to look for them ”, tells Parisian Brigitte Macron.
"With Bonemine, we understand each other!"
His favorite characters?
The bard Assurancetourix, she admits straight away, because he "never lets go" while the whole village struggles to muzzle his vocalizations.
There is also Idefix "for its green side", which howls when you touch a tree.
Or Bonemine, the wife of the village chief, at the same time "sympathetic, full of common sense, and pragmatic".
"With Bonemine, we understand each other", smiles maliciously the First Lady, in whose eyes the "worst" is undoubtedly the painful Tullius Detritus.
During the visit, Brigitte Macron talked a lot with Ada, Albert Uderzo's wife for 67 years.
LP / Fred Dugit
During the visit of the exhibition, Sylvie Uderzo, the only daughter of the designer, answers the questions of Brigitte Macron which fuse in front of the boards that she scrutinizes. "Do we know which village he was inspired by in Brittany?" "" Falbala's model is his wife Ada? "" Do we know why he chose to make a
wrapped
Obelix
?
»So many anecdotes that fans of the artist will be able to discover in the Special Edition that Le Parisien
devotes to him (
Uderzo, the secrets of the comic book giant
, 6.90 euros).
The comic strip has always figured prominently in the readings of the tenant of the Elysée, a former professor of letters.
Many Asterix, "a little Tintin", but also Gaston Lagaffe, the Smurfs and Lucky Luke ... But the most knowledgeable of the couple is the president, she confesses.
“Very sharp on what is happening at the moment, unlike me.
"
Her husband "the irreducible"
In front of the first sketches of Asterix exhibited at the Maillol museum, she remembers, laughing, a dinner in Shanghai with the Chinese presidential couple in November 2019. The actor and director Guillaume Canet, who was on the official trip, had asked the president French to plead with his counterpart the possibility of turning in China "The empire of the middle", the next Asterix (in theaters next year). The Covid finally forced the team to shoot elsewhere, but since November 4, 2019, Xi Jinping is no longer totally foreign to the throes of the bard Assurancetourix or the druid Panoramix. “It was something! "
Her long visit ends as it began: with a conversation with Ada, Albert's wife for 67 years!
A few weeks after his death, the Uderzo family had auctioned four boards by the artist.
The 390,000 euros from the sale went to the funds of the Fondation des Hôpitaux de France, chaired by the First Lady.
After warmly thanking her for this gesture, the latter promises her that her husband - who left the same evening for Rwanda - will soon come to see the exhibition.
And he slips, like a wink: "he's irreducible!"
"
“Uderzo, like a magic potion”
, exhibition at
the Maillol museum
, 61, rue de Grenelle, in Paris (7th arrondissement), every day from 10:30 am to 6:30 pm, until September 30.
Prices: 12.50 to 14.50 euros.
