La Rochelle (AFP)

"What brings us together is sobriety," writes writer Ivan Jablonka alongside director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, who adapted his investigation "Laetitia or the end of men" for France 3.

"I wanted to talk about the life of Laetitia, not the corpse cut into pieces, but of this young woman who had pains, joys, boyfriends, who went through trials but had his share of happiness ", says the author and historian in an interview with AFP.

"I was sure that Jean-Xavier would respect the spirit of my book and behind, human beings: a dad, a mother, a sister, uncles, aunts", adds Ivan Jablonka, whose book, crowned with the Medici Prize, had approached this diverse event as an object of history, social and sensitive.

In this six-episode series, presented at the La Rochelle Fiction TV Festival, Jean-Xavier de Lestrade films the life of Laëtitia Perrais, who was placed very young with her twin sister Jessica in a home and then with a host family. investigation that followed his assassination by a thirty year old dentist, Tony Meilhon, near Pornic in 2011.

The director and documentary had already worked on intimacy and violence in several films. When a producer came up with the project, he first thought that "it would be wise for all of us, members of the audiovisual industry, to leave that aside." The book has such strength that it will never be done well ".

"But we had to give this story the opportunity to be seen and felt by a wider audience than readers of the book," says the director.

- Do not judge -

"If we stop at his excruciating death, it does not matter, but if we dig (...) there is a world behind, laid bare, a world of ordinary violence, a world that is very out In the middle there are two girls trying to heal their wounds.

In the summer of 2011, Jessica reveals repeated rapes and touching imposed by the father of her foster family. The latter, who had repeatedly accused the media of the role of a sex offender, will be sentenced to eight years' imprisonment for raping or sexual assault on five young victims.

For "Laetitia", Ivan Jablonka rejects the term "news", and prefers to speak about "the route of a young woman who ends tragically, good or bad meetings, a certain state of society."

During the three months of filming, "the death of Laëtitia happened to us all the time," says Jean-Xavier de Lestrade. "There was not a single day when a member of the team did not cry, some told me things that had happened to them, stories of violence."

In both works, the murder scene is not shown. "It's useless," says the director. "But there are violent scenes when the father hangs up his baby on the balcony, or when he rapes the mother.If you really want to respect Laetitia, you have to tell, show these things."

To bring the novel back in five hours of film, "it was necessary to simplify, with always the concern to keep the complexity of the characters", underlines the director. "At no time can the book judge anyone, starting with the arrested criminal, Tony Meilhon, who committed a terrible act, but if one draws on one's childhood, it is the same sufferings, the same traumas. ".

© 2019 AFP