Lille (AFP)
Former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and one of his relatives, MEP Gilles Boyer, spoke on Tuesday of the adaptation of their book "In the shadow", published in 2011, in series, an exercise "fascinating" but "complicated", during a conference as part of Séries Mania.
"In the shadow" (Ed. JC Lattès) is a four-handed political thriller written by Édouard Philippe and Gilles Boyer, who led Alain Juppé's campaign for the right-wing primary and who was Mr. Philippe.
The serial adaptation, the process of which is still in its infancy, is expected to come in six episodes, four of which have already been written.
"It's an exciting but complicated exercise because the writing technique of a novel and the writing technique of a series are quite different," said the mayor of Le Havre during this conference organized by the festival in Lille.
"When you write a series you are forced to ask yourself questions that the novelist never asks in terms of decor, depth of the characters ..." and "we would like to keep what seems very difficult to present to the screen: the political world as we see it ", explained the mayor of Le Havre.
"We want to show that political life is made up of people who seek the best, people who are sometimes quite remarkable, who have reasons to get involved which are very noble ... and it is also made of cynicism, hardness, maneuvers, compromises which can sometimes take the form of compromises, and the two exist together, one of the concerns of adaptation is to keep the cursor in the right place ", explained Mr. Philippe.
According to him, fiction is held "to go a little less far than reality because if it goes so far, it is taken for something totally ridiculous".
"Imagine a series, where over a season you would have Notre-Dame burning, the Arc de Triomphe ransacked, the Capitol invaded and then all the restaurants, cafes, everything, closed ...", continued the former Prime Minister.
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