He was the first surprised when his name was pronounced at the theater of the city of Angoulême.
The Brazilian cartoonist Marcello Quintanilha still can't get over having won the Fauve d'Or for the best comic strip of the year for his album
Listening to pretty Márcia,
published by Çà et Là editions.
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Passing through Paris, after a tour of French bookstores, this 51-year-old Brazilian responds with a big smile, and a sometimes disconcerting frankness, to questions from
Le Figaro
.
LE FIGARO - Where did you come up with the idea of this album, deeply rooted in contemporary Brazil?
Marcello QUINTANILHA
- I wanted to tell the story of a mother forced to make a serious decision regarding her daughter.
A decision that saves her child, but which passes for a betrayal in her own eyes.
I like to subject my characters to difficult choices, but which are imposed on them.
This is the case for Marcia...
Who do you think this woman is?
Above all, Márcia is a strong woman.
A nurse in Rio, she shares her daily life with her companion Aluisio and her only daughter Jacqueline, whom she had with another man.
Carefree, rebellious, Jacqueline never ceases to cause problems by getting lost with favela gangs.
One day, she goes too far... Her mother will then try everything to get her daughter out of this trap.
The character of Márcia draws a lot of inspiration from my own mother.
I believe that under similar conditions she would have acted like Márcia.
Listening Pretty Márcia
features a nurse with a big heart who lives in a favela in Rio.
© Editions Here and There.
Is this a feminist comic?
Let's say rather that a feminist theme runs through the whole album.
This goes hand in hand with the emancipation of women in Brazil.
Although I think that machismo is still very present in Brazil, unfortunately.
My heroine is a woman who has no choice but to be brave, otherwise her whole life will crumble.
The colors in this comic are quite unusual. Why?
I wanted the colors of my album to emphasize the disconnection of my story with reality.
I worked on a palette reduced to 28 colors.
The colors of the comic strip are very tangy, both pleasing to the eye, reminiscent of childhood, but still leaving a bittersweet aftertaste.
I was very marked by the theater of the absurd dear to Samuel Beckett.
As in
Waiting for Godot
, I wanted the reader to escape from reality, while still hanging on to it.
So yes, the skin of the characters is purple.
And the sky is green.
But the plot remains close to that of a thriller.
Is there a surreal side?
Not really.
Surrealism frankly inhabits the dream.
While the theater of the absurd remains anchored in reality, even if it will rather stay in the region of the absurd.
What I wanted to emphasize with these different colors is the relationship between imaginary history and the social context of today's Brazil, which is very harsh.
Marcello Quintanilha: “The boxes of the board are thus perceived as moving on the page.
And it shows especially in the action sequences.
© Editions Here and There.
We also notice that the black line is very discreet. The very outline of the boxes has disappeared. For what reasons?
In fact, I wanted to draw the album only with the colors, and I wanted them to also set the scene for the action.
It's an aesthetic choice.
It brings me a kind of freedom.
The squares of the board are thus perceived as moving on the page.
And it shows especially in the action sequences.
You were born in 1971 in Niterói in Brazil. How did you discover comics?
I was born into a working class family.
My father was a soccer player and my mother a school teacher.
After a knee injury, my father became an accountant.
My older sister who is ten years older than me became a fashion designer.
I remember discovering comics in newspapers in the 1970s. My first memory relates to the American series
Alley Oop
, a comic that told the adventures of a family of prehistoric men.
Otherwise, I remember having read the adventures of Valérian, in particular
Welcome to Afflolol
, or that in the 80s, the discovery of authors like Bilal or Moebius had turned my head upside down!
(Laughs).
What do you think of the political situation in Brazil at the moment?
One thing is certain, the situation has been very uncomfortable for artists in recent years.
Why?
Because President Jair Bolsonaro is a terrible statesman!
For Brazil, he is the worst person in the worst time to do the worst things.
Certainly, Bolsonaro represents a part of Brazilian society.
A resentful society.
Part of the Brazilian people are looking for simple answers to their daily anxieties.
He clings to an authoritarian regime, where force reigns.
But he sees artists as potential prey.
We drive around with a target on our forehead.
It's very difficult.
Bolsonaro is doing everything he can to destroy the arts universe in Brazil.
Because art is something free that escapes him.
What do you think of Brazil's handling of the Covid pandemic?
Precisely, Bolsonaro has not managed anything.
He didn't want to believe it.
It was still him who encouraged the Brazilians not to use the mask!
At the height of the rise of the Covid, this could have been considered a crime.
The fact that you won a Fauve d'or at Angoulême, what does that mean to you? Can this change anything in your life?
I still need a few days to take the measure of all this.
I was not expecting it at all.
My albums are about Brazil.
I didn't believe they could convey universal reach.
It's incredible.
Perhaps the awarding of the Fauve d'or will change things a little, at home, in Brazil.
I do not know.
This already proves that my work can have an international influence.
And it's already beautiful!
Listen to pretty Márcia
, by Marcello Quintanilha, 128 p., Éditions Çà et Là.
€24.
