A graphic novel about Saint-Tropez with no yachts, no glitter, no terrace charging €80 for rosé. Just the village. The real one. The one you walk through in the morning, where you pass the fishmonger, the postman, the Tropeziens who live here off-season.
The album is out now, created by an author who spent time in the alleyways, listening, observing. Not fantasising. The result: panels where you recognise the light of la Ponche, the mistral slapping shutters, the ochre walls, that late-afternoon silence when the tourists have left Place des Lices.
The drawing is simple, energetic. The dialogue rings true. Provençal slips in here and there, people grumble about the season that disfigures everything, they laugh over an apéritif that stretches on. It's gentle, a touch melancholic, never sentimental.
A rare thing. Because in comics as elsewhere, Saint-Tropez is usually reduced to its gilded postcard. Here, the opposite: it tells the reverse, the everyday, the real fabric of the village. The part that quietly resists beneath the varnish.
A read to slip into your bag for Graniers beach, preferably off-season. When the silence returns, and you finally recognise the village the album talks about.
