It is one of the emblems of New York. The Yellow Cab roams the avenues and streets of Big Apple. We stop it with a gesture and it will bring you in an instant in the universe of Taxi Driver, and to the other end of Manhattan or the Bronx. Director Benoit cohen who lived in the USA had the idea to drive one, to become a taxi driver in this unique megalopolis in the world. From his experience, he wrote a book at Flammarion that Chabouté decided to adapt, to put in pictures. Cohen wanted to make a film about this obstacle course that will eventually propel him behind the wheel of a Yellow Cab. Which still seems to be relevant today. We know how strong and expressive Christophe Chabouté’s features are. It is also a form of autobiographical reporting that this slow ascent towards the license of taxi driver, not easy and finally in front of a bureaucracy which has nothing to envy to ours.
June 2015, Benoit Cohen is a little fed up with cinema. He lives in New York and needs a break. He wants to do a concrete job. And make it into a scenario, in total immersion. His choice ? Taxi driver, from Yellow Cab. He is decided, enrolls in a driving school and then begins an obstacle course of which he had no idea. In the Taxi Driver Academy, Benoit Cohen also discovers the multitude of intersecting destinies, learns the basic laws that should allow him to survive on the smashed asphalt, beware of the cops who do not like taxi drivers. He is lucky, he meets Fatima, known as Faty, who will take him under her wing. She is part of the school staff and avoids many pitfalls for him, lifts his morale when he always lacks the right paper for his file. Cohen persists and signs. In his head, the main character of his future wife could well be a woman.
It’s as addicting as a good thriller because the subject is new, well treated and full of twists and turns on a drawing, that of Chabouté, which is one of the most lively and hard at the same time in French-speaking comics. Of course, we wonder if the Frenchie will get there because the obstacles are sizeable and his not always nice playmates don’t understand what he is doing in this mess. Except the indispensable Faty. And its customers, a vast panorama of a dilapidated universe. An album that makes you want to wait impatiently for the film that Cohen, we hope, will shoot from this human, social experience, which finally made him roam the streets of New York in his Yellow Cab. An album full of finesse but also powerful by its force evoking the tensions of a world that escapes us.
Yellow Cab, Vents d’Ouest, 22 €
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