Yes, adapting comics to the big screen is all the rage these days, but I for one am still surprised to see this one: Adèle Blanc-sec? Tardi? Well, well,well…
I loved Adèle Blanc-sec when I was a kid, even though I was much too young to appreciate these books fully. I must have been 9 or 10 years old when I first read them, and to me they were the most scary kind of stories imaginable. Of course, I didn’t get any of the dark and absurd humor of Tardi. That all went – wooooosh – over my head, I guess. I just saw monsters. And blood. And murder. And skulls. And more monsters…. Ooh, I loved Adèle Blanc-sec when I was a kid!
It is, by the way, very strange to be calling here Adèle Blanc-sec because I read them in Dutch, not in French, and in the translation Adèle had a completely different name. She was Isabelle. Isabelle Avondrood. Which is no way near a translation of Blanc-sec! Blanc-sec means “White-dry” (It refers to dry, white wine) and Avondrood means “Evening-red”. Which I thought was a really cool name.
So, now there is a Isabelle Avondrood movie. I’m not sure if I’m going to like it. Even if it’s a good movie, how are they going to compete with my childhood memories, uh? There never is going to be a monster more scary than Tardi’s Pazuzu and no apartment can be more claustrophobic than the one Isabelle Avondrood lived in.
Above, some of the covers for the comics (the original French editions) and below the trailer for the movie (with English subtitles)
Next up: a short clip in which some scenes from the movie are compared with pictures from the comic and in which you can see Tardi himself (the man with the white beard) meet Adèle in her apartment.
And finally, a nice selection of pages from the comic. Notice how dense and text-heavy most of them are. How did I ever get through those when I was a kid?
There is a site for the movie which you can visit: Adeleblancsec-lefilm.com. Don’t worry, there is an English version.
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