In these first days of September, winter has suddenly given way to summer. It is pouring rain in the capital, the sky has turned leaden grey, umbrellas are blown over and the wind chills fragile throats. Agnès Jaoui arrives between two downpours at this little café on the island of Saint-Louis with the delightful name of Pain d’épines. A cosy place where tourists and local customers mingle; she is part of the second category, the boss calls her by her name. The actress, screenwriter, director and singer sits on one of the velvet benches and removes one or two layers of clothing, autumnal shades of brown, plum and burgundy that match her bright hair with red highlights.
She looks gloomy, as if the weather She had caught the same mood. It is obvious that this photo shoot does not excite her, especially when she discovers that her sweater is moth-eaten. For a moment, it seems that we are seeing Jean-Pierre Bacri, her grumpy partner in life and on stage for almost thirty years, who died in 2021. Obviously, Agnès Jaoui prefers to talk than to pose. Still.
She ordered a smoked black tea with milk, just to warm up and also because she decided to give up alcohol. Since when? “Since this afternoon!”She relaxes, we breathe. After spending the summer with twenty-five family members and friends in a house in Italy, she needs a little break. A particularly busy start to the school year awaits her, with a book, a record and a film, no less. “The possibilities of life”explains, a bouquet of “first times” Also.
“I have become an old feminist”
Because Agnès Jaoui has added a thread to her already well-stocked bow: a first story about friendship and the gaze of others, The size of our breasts (Grasset, 144 pages, 19 euros), illustrated by her childhood friend Cécile Partouche, in which she beautifully narrates sketches from her early youth. Without avoiding the less funny moments, the heavy gaze of the men, “The incredible shock of the child who becomes bait”the abusive uncle, finally, whom she had already mentioned, in 2020, in an emotional speech within the framework of the 50/50 collective, which fights for a better representation of women in cinema. In this kind of autobiography of her early years, she has this terrible sentence: “I have never been courted, looked at, flirted with, groped, harassed, abused as much as I was when I was between 10 and 13 years old. It must be said that I had breasts very early. » “I wanted to talk about thathe explains, taking a sip of black tea. We talk about the size of dicks, but never about the size of breasts, or how they look at us…”
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