Amélie Nothomb
© CATHERINE CABROL

Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Nothomb
by Tobias Grey

Rare indeed is it to find a writer entirely happy with a film adaptation of one of his or her works. Tears of sadness as opposed to joy provide the usual scenario. So it’s quite beguiling to see Amélie Nothomb — Belgium’s literary wunderkind — deem the outcome of “Stupeur et Tremblements” an unqualified success.

While the FNAC in Saint Lazare might not be the most glamorous of settings, wild horses wouldn’t have kept Nothomb’s “legion,” as they will henceforth be known, turning out in force. Everywhere I look white knuckles can be seen clutching at copies of her slim-line books. I can only think to get out sharpish before the autograph rush begins. There could be a stampede.

Never mind that Nothomb is joined by“Stupeur et Tremblements” director Alain Corneau and star Sylvie Testud, it’s clear who the main object of attraction is. Dressed in black, Nothomb has something of the Gothic pixie about her, with that pale, pale skin, straggly brown hair, blood-red lipstick, and at the final count a throaty laugh straight out of the barmaid’s handbook.

At 35, in a matter of 11 years and 10 novels — Nothomb has become Belgium’s leading literary export. Her books have now been translated into 24 different languages [four of them: “Stupeur et Tremblements” ("Fear and Trembling"), “Métaphysique des Tubes” (“The Character of Rain”), “Le Sabotage Amoureux” (“Loving Sabotage”) and “Les Catalinaires” (“The Stranger Next Door”) are in English] and have garnered her several of France’s more prestigious literary awards.

“Stupeur et Tremblements” — Nothomb’s eighth novel — is a richly absurd, almost entirely autobiographic, account of her time as a 20 year-old spent working for one of Tokyo’s major conglomerates. Over a year long sojourn Amélie — the heroine’s name leaves us in no doubt as to who we’re talking about — is subjected to one humiliation after another. She begins by losing her position as an interpreter because paradoxically her Japanese is too good. Then, she is made to look utterly ridiculous as an accountant with no head for figures. Finally, she is demoted to washroom attendant, the only job she is considered fit for. Throughout, only Amélie’s stoicism and propensity for daydreaming keep her coming back for more.

“My big mistake was to think I was Japanese because I was born there and lived there until I was five. I had this kind of mythology about Japan which pertained to living in a village in the mountains [she was born in Kobe] and this couldn’t have been further from reality. I actually lived in Tokyo,” she says. “As such it was a story I never would have been able to make up without experiencing it first hand.”

It is a brave book, unflinching in its depiction of the sadistic world of Japanese business culture particularly in its harshness towards women. But, its writing appears to have blunted any bitterness Nothomb might have held against the Land of the Rising Sun. The book has been translated in Japan and that is totally to their credit. “Frankly, it’s much easier to accept criticism when it comes from someone on the inside, it’s much harder to take when it comes from a complete outsider,” she says.

“I did receive some very serious letters as regards the book but that’s normal, you have to accept the consequences of what you put out there.”

The film which is an incredibly faithful adaptation of the book captures some of Amélie’s quirkiness without quite hitting the heights of the novel’s exceptional lyricism. Part of this “lack” is because Nothomb’s account takes place in the half-light between dream and reality — something that has always been very hard to express on celluloid. The images that Corneau opts for to represent the unreal are fraught with déjà vu whereas Nothomb’s prose imbues each bound of fantasy with an otherworldly quality.

This appetite for the absurd is given a full rein at the FNAC when the writer lunges into a description of a recent dream she had about the film’s star Sylvie Testud whose Amélie is the best thing about Corneau’s film. In that dream, Testud chopped off somebody’s head and busily roasted the rest of the unfortunate’s body over a spit. She then proceeded to tuck in... Is this dream asks Nothomb, directing her question to Testud, a metaphor for the actor’s craft? Testud needless to say is lost for words and can just about manage a squeaky“oui” before much laughter and applause ensue from Nothomb’s “legion.”

It’s “one for the archives” — as is her World Record for the fastest ever descent of Mount Fuji (3 776 meters in 40 minutes) or her avowed preference for rotten over fresh fruit. No wonder her critics can’t work her out and spend so much ink trying to do just that. Nothomb’s off-the-cuff remark to Testud: “I think it must be the first case of a French actress playing a Belgian character in a French film,” shows precisely how much of an impression she’s made on the Gallic consciousness. In a country where Belgians are often the butt of humorless jokes, Amélie Nothomb has had the last laugh and you can see she revels in it.

There is as I mentioned earlier this pixie-like side to Nothomb, a sort of child’s glee in upsetting the applecart which runs through all her novels. The English title of one of her books is “Loving Sabotage” — about another foreign sojourn, this time in China where Nothomb’s father was posted as Belgian ambassador after Japan. It is a reflection on childhood laced with enough truly subversive wit to ruffle feathers, both conservative and liberal. What makes it such a scream is that Nothomb is looking at things from a child’s perspective and of course nobody can match children for their cruelty, be it thoughtful or thoughtless.

As much as anything it is this love of the subversive that has given rise to Nothomb’s legion, an army made up mostly of adolescents and child-minded adults. You can count me in!

Portrait courtesy of Amélie Nothomb’s French publisher Albin Michel.