In
The Happy Life
, his new novel, David Foenkinos stages a romantic comedy with melancholic and offbeat charm.
It all comes down to a Korean rite, which means that by confronting one's own death - literally being put in a coffin - one finds the taste for living... We follow in turn Éric, a senior executive at Décathlon, that an ancient tragedy cracked, and Amélie, charged by the Macron government to travel the world to praise the merits of France to foreign companies.
The first decides to leave the private sector for the public, when the second, a former classmate, contacts him via Facebook.
A business trip to Seoul will change their lives forever.
With great skill – and delicacy – the writer weaves, unweaves and reweaves their trajectories, playing on missed opportunities and second chances, somewhere between
When Harry Met Sally
and
Lost in Translation
.
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Madame Figaro. –
Happy Life
returns to a recurring theme for you
: death and resurrection…
David Foenkinos.
– Hence Charlotte Salomon's sentence at the start of the novel: “To love life even more, we should even have died once.
» Approaching death can be beneficial.
I learned it when I was 16;
I then had a heart operation and was hospitalized for many months.
I had a near-death experience, with the famous tunnel, the impression of leaving my body and stopping as I was heading towards the beyond, only to turn back.
It transfigured me — but I'm no different from many people who have been seriously ill.
My relationship with others and with beauty was transformed, I started to read, to want to write... This is what we find in
Toward Beauty
and
Charlotte
: the idea that art can console and give an emotional meaning to existence.
My main reading of the world has since been summarized in one word: sensitivity.
Is the rite that allows your hero to come back to life real
?
Yes, and it's a real phenomenon in South Korea.
You should know that the suicide rate in this country is very high.
We are talking about a very difficult society where the collective stifles the individual, where discomfort is omnipresent.
The ceremony I am talking about, which is individual in the novel, is collective in reality.
We dress in white, there are candles, and everyone places themselves with their photo in front of their coffin, with their epitaph, a few biographical lines, then enters the coffin where they remain for an hour, plunged in darkness.
Physically experiencing one's end is an experience from which people emerge transformed.
I found very strong testimonials on Korean forums.
This also happens to us when loved ones die: we encounter death and, for a time, we tell ourselves that we are going to put things into perspective, change our relationship with life... It is generally in vain, our mind is quickly taken over by trifles, but this impulse for the essential, this momentum, nevertheless arises in the face of death.
Did you highlight Charlotte Salomon's sentence after or before knowing that you were going to dedicate a show to her with Audrey Tautou
?
Before !
Charlotte, the novel,
is widely studied at school, I continue to bring her memory to life as with this sentence or the eponymous show which has just been presented at La Seine Musicale with Audrey Tautou.
There is a sentence from Patrick Modiano that I love: “I was 20 years old, but my memory refused my birth.”
As if memory exceeded our own limits, and as if writing consisted of searching for this memory... Audrey is very happy and fulfilled, she decided to stop her career for a while and, for five years, everyone has had a little fantasy of bringing her back.
She changed our lives, me and my brother (
Stéphane Foenkinos, casting director, screenwriter and director, Editor's note
).
When she agreed to film in
La Délicatesse
, the film was put together and it was magical... For the show
Charlotte
, I therefore “gave it a try”, as I had tried ten years ago, and she replied: “Listen David, I’m not saying no to you.”
It was fantastic !
I am particularly happy to have found her, but also that she has returned to highlight, beyond my book, Charlotte Salomon.
She, who is very sensitive to painting and art, was very touched by what Charlotte said.
I am also delighted that the show was directed by the genius Jérémie Lippmann, and that the musical part was provided by David Bowie's bassist, Gail Ann Dorsey.
Charlotte Salomon has always considered that her work was also a sung and theatrical work.
We therefore brought together the music, the story of his life, projections of his paintings, a sort of sound and light in this sublime room of the auditorium of La Seine Musicale... Ten years after the publication of the book, I could not don't have a better gift.
Couldn't we also see in
La Vie humaine
a revisited romantic comedy
?
This is an idea that makes me very happy!
If this ritual plays the role of a pivot, I above all wanted to orchestrate the crossover of a man and a woman around, in fact.
I had never before written a long-term love story, where people know each other young, lose sight of each other, find each other again, miss each other... Basically, it's
When Harry Met Sally
around a coffin, this novel!
I really like the idea that over time, we change, and that the way we look at others also changes, so that after a certain number of disillusionments, difficulties, the crumbling of life , in short, initially incompatible people become incredibly compatible.
At 20, they don't look at each other, at 30, they work together but miss each other, and at 40, here they are armed with new evidence.
I liked the characters, her in particular, a damaged fighter who, from her failures and her disillusionments, draws a new truth about herself and calms down, particularly in her relationship with children.
He has always been cracked, while she is a warrior, a woman of power, a powerful woman who finds herself powerless, especially in the political world where, like actors in the cinematographic world, we are at the mercy of the desire of others.
My novel is
When Harry Met Sally
around a coffin!
David Foenkinos
It's rare that you immerse us in such a contemporary world...
Yes, most of my novels are disconnected from it.
Perhaps this is why they are so popular abroad, because there is something timeless about them.
But
Happy Life
depicting this strange Korean rite, I needed to counterbalance this strangeness with great precision in the dates - everything happens between 2017 and 2024 - and a real picture of the environments in which my two heroes are anchored. , whether it is corporate life, with Eric's career at Décathlon, or political life, with the backstage of the senior civil service and Macronie with Amélie, who "sells" the merits from France to foreign companies.
Both interest me a lot, and one could say that one of the common threads of the book is the fatigue of being oneself that they both experience, at different times in their lives. existence… And then, I needed, more prosaically, jobs that could lead them to take a trip to Seoul as part of a professional mission.
Two colleagues who meet at the end of the world, in the evening, in the rain... And that's where we find the romantic comedy!
Happy Life, SP