INTERVIEW
The summer box is not a film, not a hit, but a magazine: the two copies of Society devoted to the Dupont de Ligonnès affair have sold 130,000 and 150,000 copies respectively, are out of stock. stock everywhere, almost harder to find than the man they're interested in. A success due to the passion of the French for news items, as also shown by the success of the Netflix documentary on little Grégory, but which surprises Christophe Hondelatte, guest of Culture Médias on Europe 1. Because according to him the written press has disinterested in the news item over the long haul, which nevertheless, thanks to the "small details", tell of all "the ambiguity of man."
Telling the "tiny detail"
"If the written press had felt for 20 years that the news was promising, it would have done much more," said Christophe Hondelatte. According to him since the death of France Soir , which still dealt with this kind of subject over the long term, she no longer does. " The Parisian does not follow: they will make a paper, sometimes a second, but we do not have the end of the story. Today in the news item, we do not have the end. Me, to tell my stories, I cannot count on the written press ", in any case not the one which comes after the 80s, estimates the journalist.
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The intelligence of Society in this affair, considers Christophe Hondelatte, "is to have given us details." Indeed for him, "what is interesting in the news item - I have been pleading it for a long time and those who listen to Hondelatte's story know it - is the detail, the very small detail." The two issues of the magazine even taught him things "about the killing process, about the chain of deaths ... What we knew in large, we know in detail, and that's what makes the According to a criminal case, it is smart of Society to have, in fact, at least as far as the first issue is concerned, published the trial brief. "
The other reason for success according to the journalist is inherent in the case. "There is something very particular around Dupont de Ligonnès. The duality of man taken to its extreme. We have everything: aristocracy, Catholicism, the seemingly perfect family, and the bottom of it all . "
Investigation and identification
He who only tells about criminal cases that find a solution, nevertheless finds that this case which "refers to the Romand affair, to lives built on a lie" has something "always fascinating because the identification process , which is what gets people interested in criminal matters, works hard. "
Christophe Hondelatte believes that what is interesting in the news item is "the ambiguity of man", not the suffering of the victims. It is "a story of a criminal investigation. In Bring in the Defendant , when you looked for the right ingredients, you said 'sperm, blood and tears.' It's always good when a case takes place in the context of a relationship, and the crime of blood accounts for a moment. Finally the tears, because we have to be sad for the victim and the people who loved him. "
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The journalist is currently preparing a book on the Jourdain brothers' affair, around the question of the humanity of the killers. Because a news item "is only interesting if the criminals are humans, if they look much more like us than we think," he concludes.