Télé-Québec’s first drama series since the excellent Can you hear me ?by Florence Longpre, The air to go marks the first foray into television fiction by Urbania and the novelist and poet Jean-Christophe Rehel. Suffering from cystic fibrosis, the author of What we breathe on Tatouine (Del Busso, 2018) drew on his own experience of the disease to create the tightly knit quartet that we will follow during the 10 episodes directed by Sarah Pellerin (The knights).
“There are a couple of pulmonologists who will be angry with me,” said Jean-Christophe Réhel, met during a press briefing following the presentation of the first three episodes at the Modern cinema. “We wanted to break that from the first episode; it exists, couples, groups, friends of cystic fibrosis, but it is not recommended. The prospect of dating people with cystic fibrosis is impossible for me, because I would be afraid of the sharing of bacteria. I put a bit of my life into each character, but Jimmy, who is a hypochondriac, is the one who most resembles me. »
Katrine (Catherine Saint-Laurent), Gabriel (Antoine Olivier Pilon), Jimmy (Joakim Robillard) and Cindy (Noémie Leduc-Vaudry) are inseparable friends aged 25 to 30. Suffering from cystic fibrosis to varying degrees, they share, in addition to “shitty lungs”, a voracious appetite for life and a love for Harry Potter, THE Lord of the Rings And The magician of oz. Besides, any resemblance between Katrine’s friends and Dorothy’s gang is not at all coincidental…
“It’s a bunch of teenagers, lance Sarah Pellerin. What’s interesting about them is that they’re a little younger in spirit than most because the disease has kind of curbed their career ambition, their experience of life, of love. It’s like they had a vision of the future which is not the same as for the average person. They have another relationship with the future which explains this kind of youthful spirit, of wanting to let go of their madness. »
However, despite their joie de vivre, their sense of celebration, their desire to thumb their nose at the disease, from the first episode one of them will have breathed his last. The giggles will however be there, because rarely will we have attended such a joyful and deliciously offbeat funeral.
“I did not hesitate for a second to approach death, confides the screenwriter. In each show that I looked at where it talked about disease, it was always incidental, it was to value healthy people. The sick died in their corner so that the others could shine. I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted the healthy people to be a bit apart and the sick to shine. »
“I have the impression that death is part of them, of their reflection, because their death will come faster than for the average person, adds the director. Strangely, there is a kind of easier happiness when you have accepted that death is omnipresent. I felt like playing with that, so I added more dreamlike moments to the funeral home. Death is always there, but is it that scary? How do they manage to juggle that on a daily basis? »
Breathless
While he expresses his pain and his frustrations by writing poems, Jean-Christophe Réhel wanted his characters to exteriorize theirs through dance, thus allowing them to regain possession of their bodies. Choreographed by Brittney Gering, these moments appear in the more dramatic scenes like breaths of fresh air.
“With images, you have no choice but to find an original way to express that. When I thought about dancing, I thought it would be great. However, I am not a dance fan. It was a roll of the dice, but Sarah did a wonderful job with the choreographer. I didn’t want it to be like grease Or Cabaret ; I wanted to get away from it as much as possible and, at the same time, I didn’t want it to be contemporary dance. I wanted them to be poetic danced moments,” says the novelist.
In rehearsal and during filming, the director and the choreographer had to adjust certain movements according to the location, the costumes and the abilities of each actor, since only Catherine Saint-Laurent had dance training.
“I didn’t want to film it the way you film dance,” explains Sarah Pellerin. We are more in the choreographed movements that evoke their interiority. In the framing, I wasn’t shooting the classic dance scene. Usually, in dance, wide shots pay off, because then you see all the grace of the movements, but I always wanted to be very close to them. The multiplication of shots therefore made it possible to understand their movements and to be close to them. The emotion interested me more than the choreography. Then, the editing allowed us to pace, slow down and speed up, to be more in tune with the emotion of the scene. »
“The philosophy of the show was that sick people are happier than healthy people. There are people with cystic fibrosis who will watch this showthere and who may not be seen in the characters. Some have a career, a house, a family, but that’s not what I wanted to show. I hope I have touched on some truth, but that is my perception of the disease. It’s fiction, anyway, ”concludes Jean-Christophe Réhel, who will find his characters for a second season.