Yvon

Yvon cleans up invisible dust, counts to reassure himself, talks a lot, screams in anger and writes to calm down. His retirement is imminent and before leaving his official accommodation, he revisits his life as a decontaminator in nuclear power plants. Yvon begins to write his story.

Yvon has panic attacks. And there may be a more beneficial remedy than Xanax to clear away the dregs of a past life spent decontaminating nuclear fuel storage ponds with a cloth folded in four: there’s the spoken word. Yvon doesn’t like silence. He begins writing aloud, bent pensively over his computer as if in prayer, as his combat and trades union membership coincided with his learning how to use a keyboard: his first tracts, too long at first, then more concise and effective. His search for the right word for CGT slogans and now, for describing the recruitment sessions held by EDF’s subcontractors – veritable “cattle markets” – and the radioactive doses he absorbed through his fingertips. Marie Tavernier, who had met him along with other decontaminators for her film À ma mesure (2017), through memories and text, follows the emergence of what Yvon needs to get rid of if he is to find peace. Although words can free his mind, his body, scarred by 40 years of burying, will probably not allow the radiation to resurface and Yvon is no fool. But, irradiated by working-class exploitation, he has to spill out onto his blank computer screen the overflow of what he has been asked to absorb his whole life long, so that his flesh does not remain the sole repository, the only trace of the waywardness of a progress-driven society.

Christian Borghino