Jean-Christophe Réhel writes beautifully. As a poet, he has six collections of impressive titles to his credit, including Volcanoes smell like coconut, fruit fatigue, comb the fire. He is known for his novel What we breathe on Tatouinewhich was released in 2018, received rave reviews, won the literary prize for students and has been adapted for theater and a podcast with the voice of Marc-André Grondin.
L’air d’aller is Jean-Christophe Réhel’s first foray into television.
The series has already been nominated for the Canneseries market. Four young people in their mid-twenties suffer from cystic fibrosis like him. As one member of the group watches their days fade away, the others do whatever it takes to embrace their madness and make memories.
Photo provided by Télé-Québec
If Réhel’s work has so far been marked by illness, it has always been with a touch of humor and a gentle and disarming clarity.
With its references to popular culture and lovable characters, it makes you want to turn the pages or chain the episodes together. In one breath, it settles into our television universe like a new voice.
This is your first experience as a television writer. What is the emergence of seem to go ?
In the summer of 2020, I was working on an animation project with my Peigner le feu collection that saw the light of day on the TV5Unis website, but my producer Alexandre Gauthier knew that Télé-Québec was looking for new fiction. For me that was unrealistic. Presenting sick people on TV always has a melodramatic and heavy side. I think I managed to bring a lot of emotion into my characters to create a dramatic comedy. And I was very well supported by Nathalie Bourdelais. But the actual genesis of the project came to me in the CHUM waiting room. I saw two young people with cystic fibrosis who were there with their catheters and having fun. I thought that was cool. I wanted to be her friend. So I thought why not write about four friends who have it on different levels.
seem to go comes after Forever, not one day And The red bracelets. Do you feel part of a trend?
I’ve been living the trend since 1989. When we found out about Les Bracelets Rouges, the writing was well advanced. For my first TV experience, I was glad to be on familiar ground. I said to myself: all the better. People will be able to compare. The funny thing about fibrosis is that you don’t know if someone is sick. Even if he coughs, it could be anything from the flu to a cold. While cancer, for example, appears optically with hair loss.
What is fact and fiction in the series?
The friendship story is completely made up. That’s true between us [personnes qui ont la fibrose kystique], we are afraid of sharing bacteria. I’m more like Jimmy (Joakim Robillard), a little hypochondriac. But other than that, I didn’t feel like informing people or democratizing anything. I just wanted to tell a story about friendship. Without them there is no show.
Sarah Pellerin’s production contains many original elements. This includes dance in particular. Was that already part of the script?
We have the same sense of humor. I knew if she got into my lyrics it would fit perfectly. She had great vision, great openness and involved me throughout the process. For the dance, I looked for ways to poeticize the series visually. Instead of writing ten million pages to describe an emotion, I thought of dance. Sometimes there are no words when you are sick. Doing a dance can be stronger than flat dialogue. Sarah integrated a lot of music. I was associated with Shades of Dusk, a death metal band from Repentigny that I saw several times. I broke my ribs and my teeth at their shows. It was symbolic.
Besides friendship, it’s also about life…
Katrine (Catherine St-Laurent) is a little bit punk. Jimmy always carries his fanny pack for fear of running out of pills. Whether Gabriel (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) or Cindy (Noémie Leduc-Vaudry), everyone is afraid of dying too soon. They want to outwit death and laugh at it. We are more in strength than in self-pity or pity. There is an aura around her. Living this urgency, this calamity, makes a great story. It says: I am sick but I am alive.
► seem to go, Thursday 9 p.m. on Télé-Québec. Or intermittently on telequebec.tv