Amalia
d’Aude Picault
Dargaud, 148 pages, €19.99
One day it will be necessary to write a thesis on Aude Picault’s drawing, its real lightness, its false naivety, the flexibility of its line, the accuracy of the expressions… The designer puts her art of graphic design at the service of daily chronicles feminine. Of Me I (2005) at Ideal Standard (2017), she never ceases to stage the search by young active women, some of whom are very similar to her, for a better personal balance.
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Amalia is also in search of herself, as we say in books devoted to personal development. Suffice to say that she is exhausted. Central figure of this new album which bears her name, she is promoted « Team Leader » in his risk management business, where we rhyme « open-space » and « flex-office », flexibility and elasticity.
At home, she struggles with Lili, an adorable 4-year-old fury, and Nora, her step-daughter in Terminale who mostly crams her makeup tutorials on Instagram. Her husband, Karim, does the cooking, then goes for a run to relax after yet another phone argument with his ex-wife. Meanwhile, Amalia takes out the trash cans and, concerned about the orderly functioning of the world, sorts those of her neighbours, who are not very careful in the matter.
A story that goes off the beaten path
But she may take food supplements, the body ends up letting go and the diagnosis falls: intolerance to performance. ” How about gluten and 15G, while we’re at it? “, quips her husband, an employee in an industrial bakery who uses and abuses renamed additives “improvers”.
Yes, all of this sometimes seems like deja vu, we agree. But Aude Picault’s acute observation, her ability to grasp the truth of a fleeting moment and her sense of the gag born of a skilful ellipsis take the story off the beaten track. There is Bretécher in this feminism freed from all militancy. Moreover, the history teacher of the rebellious teenager is drawn in the style of the creator of Agrippina, as if taken from one of the albums of the Frustrated. And so that the tribute is clear, the teacher is called Bretéch!
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The look worn by Aude Picault is however less fierce than that of her late colleague. Thanks to large plates spread over one page, the staging is contemplative, placing its small characters in the corners of vast natural settings, in the manner of the master of the genre, Jean-Jacques Sempé. Like him, she casually knows how to have fun with the shortcomings of her contemporaries while having tenderness for their existential distress.