Comics: in “Le Jardin, Paris”, Gaëlle Geniller sweeps away gender prejudices

For her second album, the 24-year-old author develops a luminous tale in the Paris of the Roaring Twenties, where a young man named Rose flourishes wearing dresses and dancing in a cabaret. Sparkling.

Roaring Twenties… of joy

“I wanted to paint the Roaring Twenties, but in a totally idealized way, which I totally accept. I don't cover up the dramatic things of that time, I just choose to tell the rest. My bias was to offer a positive story from start to finish, without a dramatic break as often in fiction – a classic spring, but sometimes too formatted. And I believe that today we have the right to tell stories that end well, and even that we need to.

Why the 1920s? Because it seemed more credible to me to stage Rose in this world whose spirit was opening up, rather than in the 21st century, for example, where I was afraid of being too frontal and offending people. Moreover, it was the fashion of 1920 that seduced me. I love drawing velvets, fabrics, textures. I gathered a lot of documentation and almost all the toilets I draw in the album actually existed!

The Le Jardin cabaret is not inspired by a particular place, and I don't place it precisely in Paris, it was not necessary. On the other hand, I went to see several burlesque cabaret shows and I liked these very intimate and very liberating moments, where men and women show what they are, in a good mood. I see my Garden as a cocoon, in which Rose can flourish, this “little bud” hatched by the dancers who bear the names of flowers. Besides, I would have liked to develop each of their stories, but the book would have had three hundred or four hundred pages, which would not have been reasonable, because I have already worked on it for almost two years! »