2014 seen by Adèle Haenel and Christine And The Queens

A ceremony turned your year upside down for both of you: the Césars - and that of the second female role for Adèle -, Les Victoires de La musique - and a very remarkable performance for you, Christine. Was that a turning point?

Christine - In terms of exposure, yes. I had the impression of being a very young artist in a secular ceremony and arriving with references that didn't speak to them. I remember having to insist in rehearsal to impose solitude, silence. Television producers were not pleased. I felt that they were in panic. This performance foreshadowed what I later encountered on my project: skepticism by default.

How did you experience this power struggle? You were little known at the time.

Christine - It's quite hurtful and, at the same time, my character, who is in an act of disinhibition, makes it impossible for me to betray myself. I was a little feverish, that added emotion. I really felt a before and an after. Television, even though I'm part of the internet generation, is still an important moment.

Adèle - For me, this Cesar was like a revolution. Until then, I had the impression that I was moving forward alone. In order to face the world and the demands of cinema, which are quite normative, we quickly find ourselves in conflicting positions, which we generalise. So I had adopted a fighting position, I was forcing through. It also shows a fear of an other that could exploit any form of weakness. This moment of the Cesar totally destabilized me because I felt love. It upset me. My approach to acting has changed radically. My way of acting too, I think.

Was it particularly important to win an award for the role you played in Katell Quillévére's Suzanne?

Adèle - Yes, because Suzanne intervened at a time when I was wondering about acting: what is natural in acting, is there truth in acting? This was based on my experience in theater in the previous months. For my role in Suzanne, I took on the creation of a character for the first time.

Christine, you also created a character?

Christine - The project started with the creation of my character but the more it goes on, the more the boundaries become blurred. I don't feel like I'm wearing a mask anymore. I was in emotional, artistic, aesthetic dead ends: this character was the equivalent of a writing technique, a game. What would Christine do in my place? She was a way of allowing me to do more things. I created a dressing room for her, a way of being more assertive, a posture. She exists on stage but she makes me live better. In a way, she structures me, she influences me.

Did you also have the impression, like Adèle, of building against something, of being in a fight?

Christine - Absolutely. Christine, that was also the name of my anger. I didn't feel comfortable as a young girl. Christine is gender neutral, she's suspended. The male costume is a blank page for me, it serves to claim a way to be freer. That's why I like to sing that I'm a man or a little boy.

Adele said that at the time of the Cesars she felt loved. Do you feel the success of your album as such?

Christine - Yes, partially. But as I'm very anxious, it triggers a lot of anxiety in me! I'm always afraid of disappointing. Like our society, I quickly get tired of things, I always need something new. I'm a little afraid of being the buzz of the moment. I try to make the desire, the character evolve. I wonder how Christine could become a feminine Gainsbarre.

Adèle, in Love at First Fight, the two characters are very anxious about the contemporary era. Is it a feeling you share?

Adèle - I find that there is a widespread feeling of anxiety both because of the density of information and our inability to grasp the world. At the same time, we're powerless and harassed. There is this "don't expect too much" that keeps things in place. I think anxiety is also an instrument of mass control. Careful, don't let your shower run too much! [Laughs]

Christine - Our generation is less carefree, full of disillusionment. The notion of the mass also applies to this youth that has less to build, only things to save. Which is in matters of food, matters of survival. How do we keep social gains, how do we to preserve the planet... I also see a lot of cynicism, little idealism. But art can still be a reaction to that. Selfishly, Christine is already saving me from my own melancholy.

Adèle - I feel like I'm part of a generation of statistics. It has been explained to me since college what job I could have according to the place I came from, how many vacations I'd have, how many years I'd live if I started smoking, and so on.

Determinisms that you've thwarted.

Adele - My life cannot be representative. I wasn't supposed to be successful. Anguish is used as a control instrument, I felt it on the issue of the spectacle workers, on the way it is treated. There is a very strong pressure, a threat to say that if we don't make concessions, if we don't give up what we've achieved, we're going to throw the whole society into shit and everyone will become Chinese [laughter]. What is at stake is the freedom to live differently. They try to forbid people to give meaning to their lives by telling them: you are interchangeable and all jobs are the same.

What artistic works accompanied you in 2014?

Adèle - [mumbling] Uh, I bought the Christine And The Queens album [laughs]. Other than that, the thing I listened to the most this year was Gérard Manset's La Mort d'Orion (1970). I'm an absolute fan of that album. It's between nonsense and genius. I really liked Miyazaki's Le vent se lève in the cinema. It's a film that gives meaning to everything he's done. Miyazaki is much more than imagination and invented worlds. It's not Tim Burton. And it's a movie that ends with "Thank you" and I think it's beautiful. It's a word that has a crazy ring to it.

Christine - I'm going to do my feminist.com but I think that the year was really strong for women. To stay in my field, pop, we saw very contrasting propositions covering what it means to be a woman today. For example, Nicki Minaj, who is a sexual cartoon character, but also a predatory figure. The sexual object is not her but the one she desires. At the same time, there's a girl like Planningtorock can't really be called a "woman", as she works so hard to be beyond gender. There's Rihanna, naked on a red carpet, in a very strong affirmation of her body. She's not a predator like Nicki Minaj, she obeys the male game, but she still uses her body as a business and it's a powerful one.

What do you think of the appropriation of the word feminism by the pop sphere?

Christine - The word is no longer considered a dirty word, that's something.

Adèle - Being an insult isn't too bad. Because if the word loses its violent connotation while the system remains the same, it's even more of a problem.

Christine - It's true, there's the danger of devaluation. Doesn't the fact that feminism and queer culture penetrate the mainstream or the fashion sphere weaken the meaning of the word, that's a real question. Does it raise fundamental debates or is it just a playful use? I don't know.

Adèle - When I see the word "feminism" behind Beyoncé in her show, I'm happy at the moment. But then I have my doubts. Where we're screwed anyway is that we have a form of internalization of shame that is more powerful than anything else.

Christine - Perhaps the problem is also to want to measure the degrees of feminism, to discuss Beyoncé's right to be feminine under the pretext that she wears bodysuits. I think it's cool that there are fragments of feminist discourse in her album. I think of pop music as a Trojan horse. In my work, I try to make sure there are multiple readings. For those who discovered me at the Victoires de la musique, I'm a little cutie dressed in gold. Those who follow my work more closely know that my project is rooted in queer culture. And the two readings are not incompatible.

Have you been interested in these new types of action and militancy that are grouped together under the name of zadism? [See wiki article here for context]

Adèle - Totally! I don't completely agree with you, Christine, when you speak of a less idealistic, more cynical generation. We often get lost in problems of scale. Most of the time, we don't understand anything about national issues, the economy, international problems. I can be given the runaround on that. But if you delimit very precise, very concrete stakes, like the Zadists do, everything becomes limpid. They reimplant ideology on specific geographical sites and that's where political thought can be reborn.

Christine - It's true that there is a loss of trust in our very hierarchical system. All these broken campaign promises, it's pretty devastating for those who vote. It is on this mistrust of the elites, sometimes legitimate, that someone like Zemmour grow by giving people the impression that they are heard. And that saddens me deeply.

What makes you impatient to be on 2015?

Christine - My tour is going to last until next September, which seems monstrous to me, but in a good way. But what I'm really excited about is the release of the album in the States. Maybe it'll be a terrible flop, but I'm very curious about the reception I'll get. And then I've got a more personal project: I'm going to build up my muscles. I want to transform myself physically

Adèle - I can't talk too much professionally or I'll get yelled at. And in 2015, I plan not to get yelled at too much.