Des Vivants: how are “the soups” today?
As the event series ends this evening on France 2, Jean-Xavier de Lestrade tells us how the Bataclan survivors live today.
The commemorations have passed. But for them, every day is a battle to live, despite the memory of the attacks.
Ten years later, the “soups” saw their story told in a vibrant series by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade. Eight episodes which tried to best describe the post-traumatic syndrome of these hostages who survived the Bataclan. A moving fiction telling the reality of these casual friends, brought together to recover together from the tragedy of the attacks.
Des Vivants concludes this evening, on France 2, on an optimistic note. So how are the “soups” today?
“I think they are doing pretty well,” Jean-Xavier de Lestrade replies, before detailing:
“Arnaud and Marie are still together. They have projects. David is perhaps the one who has the most difficulty detaching himself from these events. He has been very active in victims’ associations. He is going to publish a book on the subject. But as he says at one point in the series, there is no such thing as total resilience, no complete reparation.”
The creator of Des Vivants explains that these soups have only been able to “learn to live with that, within them. It will never leave them. You don’t really get cured of something like that. It will never get better. We just learn to live with it.”
The France Télévisions series will perhaps be a means of exorcising their suffering, even if the decision to film certain scenes in the Bataclan hall aroused unease and anger among several other victims, via the Life For Paris association. Its president, Arthur Dénouveaux, judges that these choices could “blur the line between fiction and reality”. But for “the soups”, who collaborated closely in the writing of the series – written entirely from their testimonies – Des Vivants reflects a certain reality:
“They were very moved, overwhelmed, when they saw her,” Jean-Xavier de Lestrade assures us. “They even laughed a lot… because they saw very personal moments on the screen. They were happy to see themselves like that. They found it really close to what they had experienced, and in particular the sequences in the corridor of the Bataclan, with the terrorists.”
And then Des Vivants is also a series for collective memory. So as not to forget. A project of rare sincerity in the French television landscape, which had a profound impact on the teams who participated in it. Like the actor Benjamin Lavernhe (Arnaud), who tells us that he has kept in touch, in life, with Arnaud and Marie: “Of course! We really hit it off. They are touching, generous, in the way they welcomed us into their lives. It created very strong bonds. We are delighted to see how lively they are.”
Des Vivants can be seen in full on France.tv
