Andréa Bescond: "With the father of my children, we love each other but we separate"

A committed multi-talented artist, Andréa Bescond publishes her first novel,

, on transgenerational secrets.

Dancer, actress, screenwriter and director, she met with notoriety with her show

– for which she received a Molière award as well as a César for the adaptation to the cinema – a strong and personal work in which she recounted the acts of pedophilia committed on her by a friend of her parents.

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On video,

Les Chatouilles

, the trailer

Is talking about me on promo a chore?

No, because I'm used to it.

If

is a fiction,

was an intimate work… It's not a chore as long as there is a universal dimension behind it.

If I talk about pedocrime, knowing that today there are eighteen children raped every hour, talking about me is talking about others.

And that's why I do it – to talk about those who suffer and are not heard, the abandoned victims.

Why is this novel important to me?

I've written fiction before – I've co-written screenplays with Éric Métayer – but here I was alone.

I needed to invent, from a subject that touches me, the question of the transgenerational, with the idea that traumas and secrets are part of the DNA of families and are transmitted unconsciously.

I would so love to push people to tell the truth, even if it hurts.

After #MeToo, we can see that this patriarchy, a certain toxic masculinity, brings bad luck to everyone

Andrea Bescond

How does this book resonate in my life?

This novel is not autobiographical, but, at one point, my father told me that I had a great-great-grandmother who defended herself against my great-great-grandfather who was going to hit her again – she grabbed a log and killed him.

I wondered: I often thought that it was because I had been the victim of pedocrime that I wanted so much to fight, again and again.

But it is possible that I also “inherited” this fighting spirit.

Why should you read

Because this novel does not condemn anyone, neither men nor women.

After #MeToo, we can see that this patriarchy, a certain toxic masculinity, brings bad luck to everyone.

It's a feminist book, but I think it will reach a lot of men.

I'm not misandre, I just want us to change the prism.

I want prevention, support, justice

Andrea Bescond

The question I dread?

None.

But I'm tired of hearing again and again people say to me: "Andréa, you have courage."

I'm not doing this to be told that, and I want to tell them that you have to seize it, this courage.

My current mental workload?

With the father of my children, we love each other but we separate, and my concern is that everything is going well in the family and that everyone remains as loving and complicit as ever.

To read alsoKarin Viard: "

is a film that corresponds to my thinking: feminist without being accusatory"

Any misunderstanding about me?

Misandry.

I'm not misandre, I just want us to change the prism.

I want prevention, support, justice.

While writing, I was…

Angry.

It was just after the government betrayal around incest and pedocrime, with this famous Billon law that they put in place out of pure demagoguery.

A simple family story,

by Andréa Bescond, Éditions Albin Michel, 256 p., €19.90.