Pascale Arbillot has just left the pouring rain of this early autumn to rush into a 1930s Parisian restaurant that looks like a tourist haunt. The place is famous for its Burgundian, but we’re not here for a food review. She descends the steps which join the vaulted cellar, where the photographer has installed his gear as best he can, between the waltz of the waiters. We order a Chablis and a Cahors.
Obviously encumbered by our presence, a few minutes from the Friday evening gunshot, the head waiter ventures to ask us what time we think we can finish… The flashes of the photo shoot crackle and Pascale, 62 films on the clock thirty-year career, confides in his shyness. The one that was seen in coconut (2008), The Little Handkerchiefs (2010), Daddy Was Not a Rolling Stone (2014), Mrs. (2020) or, these days, Annie Angerby Blandine Lenoir, and Master(s)by Bruno Chiche, describes herself as a loner. “My nature is to hide, I think choosing this job saved me. It helped me out of my lair. »
This den is first and foremost with his parents. Pascale Arbillot grew up between a Trotskyist father and a completely opposite mother, “economist profile, rather liberal democracy, a face”. His high school years are in the continuity of the latter. Like her, the young woman studied at Sainte-Marie de Neuilly, a school reserved for girls in uniform in the upscale town of Hauts-de-Seine. The father is only scared, that his daughter – “hyperwise” – end up enlisted. At 16, she agrees to take part in a religious retreat organized by the school. But is not touched by divine grace: “We are made to answer a questionnaire which gives the impression that no one else can love us but God… I feel a little manipulated ideologically”she remembers, amused, between sips.
During this stay, we do not drink Cahors or Chablis. To tell the truth, we are only entitled to broth, the students are there to pray and fast. A program that does not delight the teenager. At “dinner” time, his girlfriend Francine whispers to him that she has smuggled in a box of Chamonix, the small cakes filled with orange jelly. A feast ensues in the bedroom. “Except that we are denounced by a comrade, and we get caught, continues Pascale Arbillot. I’m hidden under the bed, they drag me on the ground. By the way, the springs of the iron bedding tear my pajamas. » The moment is violent. She is dismissed from retirement, manu militari. And welcomed home as a true heroine. “My father congratulated me! », she recalls, hilarious.
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