You only have to see him talk about literature to be convinced of the place it occupies in his life – even if François Busnel handed over to Augustin Trapenard to present “La Grande Librairie” in order to devote himself to more personal adventures (he is working on his first feature film). So he imagined, in June, after a discussion with Delphine Ernotte, president of France Télévisions, a collection of documentaries (“Les Docs de La Grande Librairie”) to revisit the great classics.
First, the format: an hour and a half, in order, he says, “to provide what is sorely lacking today: nuance”. Then, question specialists, biographers, academics, obviously. But not only. Invite historians, philosophers, psychoanalysts and writers – in short, no longer ignore a synoptic vision of the life and work of an author. Life and work that François Busnel then strives to tell in the most vivid way possible, without sacrificing the rigor required by documentary.
Suffice to say that the one dedicated to Virginia Woolf is, in this sense, particularly successful. Combining readings (by Elsa Lepoivre, member of the Comédie-Française) and interviews (Tatiana de Rosnay, Maxime Rovere, Marie Darrieussecq, Geneviève Fraisse, Simonetta Greggio and Agnès Desarthe), this investigative film attempts to understand who is hiding behind this woman whose photographs reveal an elegiac face. And to remember that Virginia Woolf’s story is first and foremost that of a survivor: victim of incest, orphaned by her mother at a very young age, then by her father at the age of 22, “she did what she could”, summarizes Marie Darrieussecq.
A woman with scathing humor
But, behind this dark veil, there is also a woman with scathing humor, capable of refusing “a stupid, disappointing marriage” (Agnès Desarthe, co-author, with Geneviève Brisac, of V. W. Le Blend des genres , L’Olivier, 2004) to “ally” with Leonard Woolf. Together, in 1917, they founded The Hogarth Press, which published his works, but also those of Freud, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and even the woman with whom Virginia Woolf maintained a long relationship: Vita Sackville-West.
Largely chronological, but never academic, the documentary looks back on Virginia Woolf’s beginnings in literature: The Crossing of Appearances (1915), Night and Day (1919), Jacob’s Room (1922) and also Mrs Dalloway (1925), without arguably his best-known novel. Virginia Woolf is also one of the founders of modern feminist thought with, in particular, the publication of A Room of One’s Own (1929) which Marie Darrieussecq had the intelligence to translate as A place of one’s own (rather than A room to one’s self).
Hitler was already in power when Virginia Woolf went to Germany and was shocked to discover the first “No Jews Allowed” signs. In 1941, when “the world had fallen into barbarism”, she wrote, the writer chose to sink and lose herself in the Ouse, the river near Monk’s House, her home in Rodmell, which l we see so well here. Besides, you have to see this documentary. Because it is particularly accessible. Because it gives ample insight into the life and work of the woman – and we can only rejoice in this – who has “become almost mainstream”, says Marie Darrieussecq, laughing when she admits to having a postcard of the author in her handbag.
