Luna at Le Rouquet, wearing a Faith Connexion jacket, a Louis Vuitton shirt, Isabel Marant pants and Chloé shoes.
In the Latin quarter of the French capital there are traces of a pending revolution. we follow them with Luna Picoli-Truffaut , heiress of spring 50 years ago. Be realistic, ask for Paris.
Pourtant j'étais très belle / Oui, j'étais la plus belle / Des fleurs de ton jardin. Catherine Deneuve's naked voice echoes in a dark room in which a neon flower floats. Over her mature and melancholic timbre is superimposed another one, sweet and distracted. It's of Luna Picoli-Truffaut, the actress and illustrator –also a singer and occasional model– that she has brought us to the Kamel Mennour Gallery, one of her favorites in Paris.
We are immersed in a work of Claude Levêque, a tribute to the song 'Mon ami la rose' that Françoise Hardy popularized and a delicate reference to the transience of lost paradises. "Yet I was very beautiful, yes, the most beautiful of the flowers in your garden," whispers Deneuve, and so does Luna. Here, in the 5th and 6th arrondissement, in the Latin Quarter, hotbed of student protests 50 years ago, we have the mark of the French May.
Also in the multidisciplinary, restless and idealistic nature of this young Parisian born in 1987, whose velvety voice we heard a few years ago on the soundtrack of Rosalie Blum, a film by Julien Rappeneau. She is quickly detected in her lively and combative conversation, which jumps from the Weinstein case to Louis C.K., whose black humor you can't help but admire and the one he finds, eye, very tender. Or in his careless natural elegance, or in her many, many artistic concerns.
Luna Picoli-Truffaut in Le Rouquet with Christian Dior trench coat and Nike sneakers.
But the granddaughter of François Truffaut –artificer of the Nouvelle vague, symbol of the French May, who died three years before Luna was born– she shows that imprint, with pardon of the topic, in the genes. “Before I used to have the theme of my last name. For me, Truffaut did not mean the same as for cinema, culture or the representation of France in the world, but rather the funny and creative man that I have known through anecdotes and small details of his life, like the kind of father that it was".
Her mother is the photographer and actress Eva Truffaut, one of the filmmaker's three daughters, and his grandmother, with whom he has a very close relationship, Madeleine Morgenstern. “She has always told me a lot about him. She ran his production company when he died and I spent much of my childhood there, every Wednesday afternoon, in my grandfather's office. So I also met him through personal items. And from his movies, of course”.
Your favorites of him? “That is changing at the same time as oneself. I recently rediscovered The siren of the Mississippi (1969). I like the dynamics of the characters, how they exchange male and female roles, it has a lot of strength.” Outside the family sphere, she always chose to keep her origins a secret. “Now, having studied film analysis, is when I really appreciate his film legacy and his work as a critic. Reading his books I thought, 'I like this man' [laughs].”
There is something in it of the character of the filmmaker that, she explains to us with amusement, she prefers not to reveal. “My mother has always said that we would have gotten along because of our somewhat goofy sense of humor, although other women in the family have this side. We are a family of women. All with the same humor and sensitivity, we want life to be something extraordinary and fun. Creative, at least."
Formed in Fine Arts in Paris, Luna also studied at the New York School of Visual Arts, a city that for her represents emancipation –“It is another home for me”– and where she always likes to return. Although, talking to her, he gives the impression that he would be happy anywhere in the world: "I don't think there is a place that I wouldn't like to know: even if it isn't aesthetically beautiful, there is always something to learn from the encounter with the other."
Luna is wearing a trench by Sonia Rykiel, her own t-shirt and pants by Margaret Howell.
Her curiosity has worked on her since she was a child; her parents encouraged her to do whatever she wanted and she tried everything: swimming, horseback riding, viola at the conservatory, guitar... “My mother was a stylist in the 80s, so she always had a very strong aesthetic sense, and my father was a photography assistant, working with contemporary artists and later creating his own art production studio. They were very free and open, it would never have occurred to them to restrict me.”
However, he did not say anything to them when she began to study theater: “I didn't want to have to hear some things, like it's hard work, very competitive and difficult. It's true but I was so excited... not to become a major actress, but to build my self-confidence. I felt mired in a paradox: she was very shy, insecure, awkward and nerdy but, at the same time, the clown of the family, very talkative and a bit of a tomboy, very direct when she knew what she wanted”.
And what he wanted, a few years ago, was to appear in Stalin's couch (2016), a film directed by Fanny Ardant, her grandfather's last romantic partner, in which she shared the poster with Gérard Depardieu. “Fanny hadn't told him anything about me and he asked me if my family belonged to the world of cinema. I told him that my grandfather had and that, in fact, they had both worked together. His reaction was very emotional”, she recalls of her experience with the protagonist of The last subway (1980) or The woman next door (1981).
“We shot a dramatic and intense scene and I was very nervous. Gérard pinched me to keep me serious and focused. He loved me. And Fanny is very Parisian, sophisticated and full of fantasy, really cool”.
Luna in Kammel Menour, next to a work by Latifa Echakhch, with a Prada bustier, a Lutz Huelle shirt and J.M. Weston.
Imagination to power, as Sartre requested when they were looking for the beach under the cobblestones, could be the motto of this girl with enthusiasm on the surface, who she dreams of working in any field related to image: fashion, cinema (as an actress or director, but also as an art director), photography, drawing... And with publishing a book of stories "with different forms of writing, dialogues, drawings, silly jokes and photographs."
She has told us that Le Champo (rue des Écoles, 51) is one of her favorite cinemas, and we walked in front of another emblematic art and essay room in the 50s and 60s, Le St Andre des Arts. We assumed that about cinephilia – it is said that Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang) was her first film crush – but what we did not know is that she is passionate – “Obsessed!” – Of the social network letterboxd , where she collects every title that impresses her: Certain Women, by Kelly Reichardt; The invisible thread, by Paul Thomas Anderson; Now Yes, Not Before, by Hong Sang-Soo; Madame Hyde, by Serge Bozon; Elle by Paul Verhoeven.
“At first I didn't know what to think about this last one, starring Isabelle Huppert [It's about a woman being raped], but when something is disturbing to me... I think it's good." She is also a big fan of Almodóvar – “He creates complex and wonderful female characters” – or of the Duplass brothers and the Safdies, part of the wave of indie cinema called mumblecore. The new television –Transparent, Fleabag, The Handmaid’s Tale...– also draws sighs of admiration from him.
Luna on rue Cujas in a jacket, shirt and pants by Céline and shoes by Chloé.
One of the tightest and most personal portraits of the 1968 revolution was made in 2012 by Olivier Assayas, also among his favorite directors. A confessed admirer of Truffaut, the creator of Personal Shopper and Viaje a Sils Maria raised in After May the drift of a movement full of contradictions that based its strength on the drive of a dreamy and young rebel bourgeoisie.
What happened once, can it happen again?, we ask ourselves as we wander through the Sorbonne and the intersection of boulevard Saint-Michel and rue Vaugirard, scenarios of revolutionary thought half a century ago, or along the Boulevard Saint-Germain, once a landscape of barricades.
Last February, Maria Grace Chiuri she resurrected the spirit of '68 for a Dior show at the Musée Rodin in Paris. that same month, Alessandro Michele –one of the designers that Luna, who as a teenager interned with Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga, admires, along with others like Martin Margiela, Phoebe Philo or Isabel Marant – launched a campaign to gucci which took up Liberté, égalité, sexualité.
But it was a third event that took place on the same dates that brought those revolutionary echoes to the mind of this Parisian. “I think of the shooting that took place at a high school in Florida [in which 17 people died] and in the response of the kids against weapons, who left classes in protest, risking suspension, and it gives me hope. We still react to the nonsense.”
Luna wears a trench coat, top and pants by Aalto and shoes by Chloé at the veteran Saint-André des Arts cinema.
Following the election of Donald Trump as president, Luna began working on a feminist blog – @lunapicolitruffautillustration – where she shares portraits like that of the anthropologist Francoise Heretier, the journalist Nellie Bly or the Pakistani activist Malala. “I felt it was essential to do something creative for everyone. This project encourages me to cultivate myself and learn from women I have never heard of. Taking the time to create something can be a political posturing. Something with meaning, involving the community, can be a kind of solution.”
Her literary references range from the sarcasm of Dorothy Parker to the realism of Joan Didion, through the wit of Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist. Names that make up another landscape of a new 68: the virtual one. “What marks the new generations is that information is everywhere. Sometimes it generates excessive noise, but it is capable of uniting people you have never seen before in a global movement. I think of the #metoo and the #balancetonporc (report your pig), although the latter does not drive me crazy, and I love when women raise their voices”
As for the criticism that the manifesto raised against these movements and "sexual puritanism" signed by the writer Catherine Millet or the actress Catherine Deneuve –who for starring in films like Belle de jour is in herself the symbol of a sexual revolution, perhaps more dreamed of than realized–, Luna twists the gesture.
“I do not agree with him at all and I think he distracted attention from necessary issues such as consent or harassment on the street and at work. This was not the time to bring up details of a particular social and cultural context. Discussing and dialoguing is important, but there is a time to simply shut up and listen to the other. Of course, the action should not be repressive but educational. You have to educate yourself."
We take metro line 10 towards Boulogne and, as time is running out, questions fly in all directions. Do you plan to record an album? Is Fahrenheit 451 among your favorite movies? How would you define Paris? –“I knew you would ask me that, I have no idea!”– Do you think Jules and Jim were advocating free love or were they criticizing it? Truffaut's cinema, we agreed, raised questions, not answers. And in those questions in the air, also the soul of the Nouvelle vague and the French May, lies the timeless magic of a revolution that is always pending.
The Grand Galerie de l'Évolution, one of Luna's favorite places.
THE TRAVEL NOTEBOOK OF LUNA PICOLI-TRUFFAUT
HOW TO GET
** Air Europa ** From Madrid and Barcelona you can reach the French capital in just a couple of hours. ** SNCF ** A more romantic way to get there is to cross France by train. From Madrid, it's about 10 hours and €130 the journey.
WHERE TO SLEEP
Hotel Molitor Paris (13 Rue Nungesser et Coli; from €215). This urban complex in the 16th arrondissement, next to Roland Garros, is one of the emblems of the city. Its swimming pools (indoor and outdoor heated) have an exciting history related to art and the avant-garde. Plus? A delicious Spa by Clarins.
MY FAVORITE MUSEUMS
The Palais de Tokyo (13, ave. du Président Wilson). I grew up visiting this museum again and again to see amazing exhibits. Also trying to learn skateboarding on the esplanade between the Palais and the Museum of Modern Art.
Galerie du Jeu de Paume (1, place de la Concorde). It always has a great selection of photography artists. It is also the place where I studied film analysis.
Atelier Brancusi (Place Georges-Pompidou). Great staging with the work of Constantin Brâncuși. The relationship between space and his sculptures is amazing and it's always fun to take a look at his Princess X.
Grande Galerie de l'Evolution (36, rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire). A magical display of animals that always brings out the precious feelings of childhood.
ART GALERIES Le Bal (6, Impasse de la Defense). Program interesting and necessary exhibitions. Also, it has a very nice bookstore and cafe.
patrick seguin (5, Rue des Taillandiers F-75011). This beautiful space has wonderful pieces from my favorite designers of the 20th century, such as Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand or Jean Prouvé. Kamel Mennour (47, rue Saint-André des Arts / 6, rue du Pont de Lodi). Some of the greatest contemporary artists –Anish Kapoor, Claude Lévêque, Tadashi Kawamata, Martin Parr...– have passed through this space.
Monteverita (127, rue de Turenne). This new gallery represents great artists that I love, such as Caroline Corbasson, one of my best friends, or my old teacher James Rielly.
Atelier Brancusi
CINEMAS
Jérôme Séydoux-Pathé Foundation (73, avenue des Gobelins). It's my favorite place to watch silent movies. Sometimes my boyfriend accompanies them playing the piano. The upper space of the building is quite special, where you can see a transparent roof, the work of Renzo Piano.
Le Champo (51, rue des Écoles). A perfect cinema to discover or rediscover classics. Very Parisian and very classic.
THEATERS AND CONCERT HALLS
** Philharmonie de Paris ** (221, avenue Jean Jaurès) . From fantastic classical music concerts to more indie-pop artists. It has become one of my essential places to enjoy live music. The sound is incredible.
Theater des Bouffes-du-Nord _(37 bis, blv. de la Chapelle) _. An absolutely romantic and wonderful place and a good stage for plays and concerts.
BOOKSTORES
San Francisco Book Co . (17, rue Monsieur le Prince). Lovely second hand bookstore. One of my best friends, who did a degree in English literature, introduced me to this place and we usually go together.
Shakespeare & Co. _(37, rue de la Bucherie) _. A classic that I always find myself returning to because of its charm, now also to have a hot drink in its new café.
Center Pompidou Bookstore (Place Georges-Pompidou). One of the most complete selections of art books.
Violette & Co. (102 rue de Charonne). Feminist bookstore with a large selection of books (overwhelmingly French translated versions).
The Claire Chamber (14, rue Saint-Sulpice). Specialized in photography. I spent a lot of time on it during my years as a Fine Arts student.
**FUN PLACES (AND ‘FRENCHY’) **
Palais des Etudes _(14, Rue Bonaparte) _. Perhaps the most beautiful part of the School of Fine Arts. Whenever I'm in the area I like to stop by.
Deyrolle (46, rue du Bac). Quirky and fun taxidermy boutique. I used to go as a teenager and buy myself stuffed butterflies.
Academie de Billard Clichy-Montmartre (84, rue de Clichy). A most cinematographic location where older men play pool. I discovered it with my mother.
BAM Karaoke Box (40, avenue de la République). My friends and I have a tacky tradition of celebrating our birthdays at karaoke. This one is brand new and has a pink room called Paradise, very Guy Bourdin, and a more Wes Anderson-esque room with monkey wallpaper, which makes the whole thing even more kitsch.
Stairs of the Shakespeare & Company bookstore, a landmark in District V.
TO WALK
Avenue Frochot (District IX) . Beautiful and private street where my grandfather shot part of Los 400 coups. A nice memory.
Coulée Verte René-Dumont (12th District). Beautiful, especially in spring and summer. It's like the Parisian version of the High Line in New York. It brings back fond memories of the time I spent there.
Bercy Park (12th District). I like to have picnics there when the weather is nice. There is a wide variety of plants and flowers for an urban setting. And it's close to the Cinemathèque.
A COFFEE
The Recycling (83, boulevard Ornano) . A charming space with very good energy. Dining room, shop and DIY workshop with an ecological and informative philosophy.
L’unlikely (5, rue des Guillemites). A sweet little 'secret' cafe in the heart of the Marais.
WHERE TO EAT
Boutique Yam'Tcha (4 rue Sauval). I love everything about this place, from the charming space to the incredible Chinese and French fusion dishes, to its select tea menu.
echo deli (95, rue d'Aboukir) . Recently opened, this deli run by a friend serves up fantastic Californian cuisine. Everything is so appetizing and tasty that it is difficult not to clean the plate. Ineko Coffee (13, rue des Gravilliers). Sophisticated, quality Mediterranean food in an attractive space.
AND HAVE DINNER
Soy (20, rue de la Pierre Levee). Great vegetarian cuisine. Their brunch is highly recommended.
Dersu (21, rue Saint-Nicolas). Delicious and sophisticated dishes, spectacular cocktails and fantastic energy.
krishna bhavan (24, rue Cail) . It has very good vegetarian Indian recipes. It is very relaxed, unpretentious, and ideal for a snack after enjoying a concert in the area.
California cuisine at Echo Deli
OF CUPS
Monsieur Antoine (17 avenue Parmentier). It is the project of a friend who was part of the musical band in which my boyfriend played. They prepare delicious cocktails while rock music plays.
Combat (63, rue de Belleville). A kind of feminist cocktail bar, in which two ladies prepare amazing cocktails.
TO PAMPER YOU
L'Échappée Spa (64, rue de la Folie Méricourt). A perfect refuge to get rid of stress. Their masseuses are really good and they use organic products.
MAY 2018
The Cinemateque Française (51, rue de Bercy). From May 2 to July 29, it dedicates a major exhibition to the committed creator, explorer and activist Chris Marker.
University of Nanterre (200, avenue de la République). The place where the spark of the revolution jumped invites you to seek new ideas about the spirit of 68. Events, talks, debates, theater and concerts.
Tokyo Palace (13, ave. du Président Wilson). The headquarters of the Museum of Contemporary Art questions the legacy of 1968 with a monumental work by the Spanish artist Escif.
National Archives (Pierrefitte-sur-Seine; 59, rue Guynemer). The exhibition May 68, the archives of power shows the unprecedented perception of the movement from the desk of Charles de Gaulle or from that of the Prime Minister Pompidou. From May 3 to September 22.
Cite de l'Architecture & du Patrimoine Palais de Chaillot (1, place du Trocadero) . The social and artistic revolution also had its mark on architecture, in the way of building lei motiv cities under which this institution has programmed exhibitions, workshops, conferences and debates.
***** This report was published in **number 117 of Condé Nast Traveler Magazine (May)**. Subscribe to the printed edition (11 printed issues and a digital version for €24.75, by calling 902 53 55 57 or from our website) and enjoy free access to the digital version of Condé Nast Traveler for iPad. The May issue of Condé Nast Traveler is available in its digital version to enjoy on your preferred device.
Artwork by Claude Lévêque at Kammel Minor