We told ourselves that this couldn’t happen to us. We watched, not too concerned, the images on TV of these caregivers in overalls isolating the contagious. It was in China and it was far away. But all the same, our little voyeuristic side was starting to panic with this “modern plague”, a virus escaped from we don’t know where, nor we know how. And then, in this world without barriers which suits us well to bring, from China precisely, our “Nikes” and our iPhones, the virus invited itself on the great journey. Here he is in Italy! There, it touches us more closely, we’ve been there, we have friends there, maybe family. In France, patient zero is identified, he will remain in history, and then that’s it, there’s panic. Do we still remember what we were doing on March 17, 2020 at 8 p.m., when the austere voice from the small skylight froze our lives in our not necessarily suitable interiors? Do we remember the astonishment of this macabre count of victims who leave the world on the sly, deprived of ceremony? 2020 is not that far away, we were talking at the height of the crisis, about the world of tomorrow which was inevitably going to be new, but in the meantime we have to cope.
Gwenaëlle Aubry cuts a Parisian building into sections and we go from one floor to another, from one family to another to experience from the inside this strange new life which is imposed on all the inhabitants of the planet. We don’t go out, we don’t touch each other anymore, we barely brush against each other. Prohibited, long walks, suspicious of neighbors who cough in a funny way, dangerous for children, healthy carriers therefore carriers of this “plague” that scientists are unable to control, under the imprecations of a Marseillais with hair long.
Georges (first floor right) reunites with his childhood sweetheart, Claire and Hugo are still in love (second floor left), Emmanuel Mulin thinks it’s finally going to be his time (first floor left)… They all have a little bit of us and we can all find themselves in their anxieties, their questions, their fears and their hopes. Rubbing the groceries with vinegar, filling out the exit authorization or not, crying at the end of confinement, crying again at the re-confinement, laughing at the freedom found again… In this world after which still bears a striking resemblance to the world before, a magnificent sting a reminder of what we have all experienced… and all forgotten.
