To read Yourcenar is a powerful experience; to hear her work read aloud is just as moving and striking. Marilù Mallet crafts a sensitive mediation out of Yourcenar's literary autobiographical material in a virtuosic first-person narrative performed by Sophie Clément, whose husky and measured voice leads us to believe that Yourcenar herself is talking to us. The narration is supported by scrolling images: reconstructions, interviews with people who were touched by her work and life, sepia-coloured archival photographs that evoke a “disquieting melancholy.” This amalgamation renders the encounter with Yourcenar multidimensional and profoundly real. We discover therein the author’s various commitments: among others, a great concern for environmental issues. Mallet does a meticulous job of humanizing this woman of letters whose talent is in no way limited to intellectual rigour alone, highlighting the dreamy quality and sense of magic that fill her writings. The energetic throughline of the film are her travels and the accompanying wanderings of her mind, rooted in an uprooted childhood, but anchored in the love of simple things: a penchant towards grass and cows, towards a goat with golden horns.

Gabrielle Ouimet
Tënk's Artistic Director