It is a comic book phenomenon, sold more than 100,000 copies and won awards everywhere it has appeared. It will soon become a film, by the director and screenwriter of Bernadette.
What project for director Léa Domenach after the release of Bernadette? During a podcast interview around the event film with Catherine Deneuve, the filmmaker spoke to our microphone about her upcoming project.
“I’m starting to write again with the screenwriter Clemence Dargent. It’s the adaptation of a comic strip, Peau d’homme, which was quite successful a few years ago, written and drawn by Hubert and Zanzim. It will be a musical. So as for Bernadette, it’s a bit of a gamble!
And added: “It’s a fairly political comic, something about gender, about the notion of the individual, about the rise of religious fascism. This is the next big project.”
This comic book experienced great success in the wake of its release in 2020: more than 100,000 copies were sold a year after its release (surely more today) and especially this comic book co-signed by the late Hubert and Zanzim received an avalanche of prizes, giving this work a singular notoriety and aura.
This comic book published by Glénat took the challenge of telling a fairly unusual story with a real underlying point about gender, patriarchy, giving it a political message. Peau d’homme sets its plot in Renaissance Italy. We follow Bianca, a young lady from a good family, of marriageable age. Her parents find her a fiancé to their liking: Giovanni, a rich merchant, young and pleasant. The marriage seems to take place under the best auspices even if Bianca cannot hide her disappointment at having to marry a man about whom she knows nothing. But this was without knowing the secret held and passed down by the women of his family for generations: a “man’s skin”!
By donning it, Bianca becomes Lorenzo and benefits from all the attributes of a young man of astonishing beauty. She can now visit the world of men incognito and get to know her fiancé in his natural environment. But in her male skin, Bianca frees herself from the limits imposed on women and discovers love and sexuality.
“The morality of the Renaissance then acts as a mirror to that of our century and poses several questions: why should women have a sexuality different from that of men? Why should their pleasure and freedom be subject to contempt and coercion? Finally, how can morality be the instrument of a domination that is both severe and unconscious?” can we read on the website of its publisher Glénat.
Questioning our relationship to gender, sexuality, but not only…
“Through a lively and subtle fable like a comedy by Billy Wilder, Hubert and Zanzim brilliantly question our relationship to gender and sexuality… but not only that. By mixing religion and sex, morality and humor, nobility and frankness, Peau d’homme invites us both to the liberation of morals and to the crazy and ardent quest for love.“
Before discovering this next project, the writing of which is in progress, director Léa Domenach is on display with Bernadette, led by Catherine Deneuve.
When she arrives at the Elysée, Bernadette Chirac expects to finally obtain the place she deserves, she who has always worked in the shadow of her husband so that he becomes president. Sidelined because she was considered too old-fashioned, Bernadette then decided to take her revenge by becoming an essential media figure… Currently in the cinema.
Comments collected by Vincent Formica, Thursday September 28, 2023