Tout mon amour, de Laurent Mauvignier, au Théâtre National de Nice
Jeudi 23 Mars 2023
Publié sur le site : Resonances Lyriques Org

Tout mon amour, directed by Arnaud Meunier ...or the trauma of a family stripped of the very last member. Elisa is six years old when she disappears without a trace, leaving behind a family stripped of all its substance. "You don't forget anything, you don't forget anything at all, you don't forget anything, you just get used to it".
This family is no exception to the rule, interpreted by Jacques Brel in other times, and they deal as best they can with the absence of meaning, occupying the time, the long time of ten long years, moving house, going on trips, inviting friends, even going so far as to make a pact never to raise the subject of the disappearance again, for want of a lead; a pact to sacrifice the hope of finding the child for that of regaining their freedom. But "none of this, none of anything in the world, can make us forget, cannot make us forget"...
The trauma of a mother, portrayed in the haunting voice of Anne Brochet (1), drowned in denial and mental isolation, having lost the ability to listen and to relate, to the point of becoming incapable of loving her only remaining child! A mother torn between her desire to forget and her carnal inability to live in the present. A mother stripped of her role as a mother, a dead mother.
The trauma of a father, wonderfully played by Philippe Torreton (2), who tries to keep his dignity and his feet on the ground, but who is haunted by the presence of the dead who speak to him, starting with that of his father, whom he has just buried at the place where he disappeared, in the village of their past. "Crève!!!" he shouts at his father's ghost, who has just died but can't die, can't leave because there's no tangible truth about the life or death of his missing offspring. "Even dead, I'm alone!" despairs the grandfather, played by Jean-François Lapalus, who still hopes to see his granddaughter resurrected. Perhaps that's why he wears a colourful costume, because he still has a little life left in him...
The trauma of a son and brother, admirably played by Romain Fauroux: "I was eight, I think that's a good age to remember", he says in a blood-curdling tirade.
The trauma of the child in question, Elisa, "Elisa as an asylum", Elisa "the madwoman", incredibly played by Ambre Febvre. With disjointed gestures and a voice as high-pitched and airy as it is fragile, she lays crystal notes over emotions perched in the void; the void of a family, the void of an education, the void of a culture, the staggering void of an existence. A phantom? Reality?
The trauma of an entire family, afflicted by the unspoken, where the dialogues of the characters, all walled in by their own grief, are superimposed, clash, clash, like monologues without pauses to listen to the other and hear another truth.
In support of this agonising silence of facts, this interpenetration of the celestial and terrestrial worlds, set designer Pierre Nouvel plays with transparent, movable partitions, taking us from one room to another, from indoors to outdoors, from the house to the caravan, without us having the time to realise it... There are as many angles of view as there are interpretations, illuminated by Aurélien Guettard who draws windows of light and colours the space with emotion.
"It was a funeral and it went well", but who really died? We're still wondering...
Nathalie AUDIN
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(1) The actress won the Prix Romy-Schneider in 1991 and the César for Best Supporting Actress in 1992.
(2) He won the César for Best Actor in 1996.

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