Smart Tanning | Pleasure | The Press

The sunny days are perfect for relaxing, but there’s no need to put your brain on vacation. Here are four suggestions from our columnists for entertaining and thinking in the sun, one theme at a time. This week: pleasure.

How to support your freedom

I have often given this delightful little book, especially to single women, because it celebrates those seemingly innocuous moments when one discovers the joy of being free, in a voluntary solitude that sometimes has the taste of childhood. There is in this essay a eulogy to travel, discovery and independence of mind, where many writers are evoked – sometimes to contradict them – to simply bring us back to the simple pleasure of living as we please.

Chantal Guy, The Press

How to support your freedomby Chantal Thomas, Payot, 154 pages

Movie Stories

The joy of discovering or rediscovering classics of the seventh art is inevitable when readingMovie Stories (All in all), essay by the colleague of Duty François Lévesque. In Abitibi-Témiscamingue, where he is from, no one doubted that one day he would make his way in the media thanks to his passion for cinema. He is a critic with a lively and elegant pen, a scholar who has the gift of popularizing the little stories behind cult films – from Fanny and Alexandre has Titanic –putting them in their historical context. A treat for movie buffs.

Marc Cassivi, The Press

Movie Storiesby François Lévesque, Somme toute, 312 pages

Fiasco

There is a French series on Netflix that made me happy. It’s called Fiasco and it tells the story of a film shoot that turns into a nightmare. The director, played by the excellent Pierre Niney, decides to pay tribute to his grandmother, a heroine of the Second World War, but nothing goes as he would like. This series, made up of seven episodes, teaches us a lot about the reality of a film set (a bit like François Truffaut did with The American night). But above all, it invites us to take a look at a microsociety where all the archetypes are represented. Just as all the dynamics are exploited: love, friendship, revenge, pettiness, betrayal, mutual aid, forgiveness. And all this with irresistible humor and good twists! To be consumed without moderation on rainy days!

Mario Girard, The Press

Fiascoa series broadcast on Netflix, starring Pierre Niney, Géraldine Nakache, François Civil, Vincent Cassel and Marie-Christine Barrault

Hit the port

I suffered a dozen deer fly bites while devouring this novel, sitting on the banks of a river in the Laurentians on a hot July day. A disturbing mise en abyme if ever there was one… Hit the port has been described as a story about eco-anxiety, which is true, but it is above all a literary work of formidable effectiveness. The author Mireille Gagné reels off fragments of a true story, that of the scientific experiments carried out on Grosse-Île during the Second World War, told from three different points of view. Including… that of a fly! The language is rich, the historical references numerous, and the narration breathtaking. We put this book down seized with a certain anxiety, but the exercise is worth it.

Maxime Bergeron, The Press

Hit the portby Mireille Gagné, La Peuplade, 202 pages