Whether her characters are foolish or wise, vulnerable or fierce, Yasmina Reza never wanted anything other than to do them justice. Or rather, to be fair to them. The powerful laughter she provokes in us, in the theatre as in her books, is not a poisonous spasm. It is an explosion of lucidity, a moment of truth: this man sitting naked on the edge of the bed, this woman taking little dance steps in the middle of the living room, suddenly appear to us not in their ridiculous posture, but in our universal vulnerability. A cartographer of human solitude, Yasmina Reza had, one day or another, to exercise the sharpness of her gaze in the courts. Accounts of certain eventsHis new book (Flammarion, 240 pages, 20 euros, digital 15 euros) mixes personal memories with stories of ordinary or sensational trials. There he was able to find his usual characters, “beyond all hope” and with them the great theme of his work: bodies attacked by the wear and tear of time, life prey to desolation.
Your books always, in a certain way, put human existence to the test, its insignificance. But this is the first time that it is encountered in the form of test reports. Why?
I have been attending trials for fifteen years. At first I went without taking notes. Out of curiosity. Many writers are interested in the news, in what we think is different from ourselves. But evidence is like a small box containing the universal. What we think is different is not. No being is reducible to a single moment, a single action. The whole enterprise is summoned to court. In addition to the main interested parties, there are relatives, friends, lawyers, state officials, witnesses… Basically, it is the family world. I ended up seeing, on very varied levels, what I had always questioned, the imperfection of life. Trials have become a subject in themselves and not, as I initially thought, an additional source of inspiration. I have never written about anything else, the difficulty of man in inhabiting the world.
“The one we think is someone else is not,” you say… In a shocking chapter, you tell how, with other high school girls, you once harassed a teacher. In this book that deals with violence and crime, is this a way of hiding your own cruelty?
I intertwine very different scales in Accounts of certain eventswhether it is recounting crimes, pains, joys, and I place myself among others. I call upon my friends, upon my own existence. I do not believe that life is compartmentalized. It is complicated and goes from the very common to the exceptional in a short time. It is a common bath, with more or less opportunities, fortunate. I cannot get out of this. The story of m.me Kling, who was my history and geography teacher, still haunts me. This woman, who was kind and gentle, has disappeared. She never gave lessons again. I see this story as a form of silent crime.
You have 54.07% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
