The title evokes one of the most famous slogans of the French May 68 protests. “Under the cobblestones, the beach”, proclaimed the young people who asked for greater political and civil liberties. Sota els còdols, la platja (published in Catalan by Finestres and translated by Marta Marfany) adapts that famous motto to give its name to an emotional story that participates in that intense youthful desire to change the world. However, the new work by Pascal Rabaté is situated in another time and in another place. Before those riots and far from Paris: in September 1962, in a town on the Brittany coast.
Summer is about to end and the three protagonists of this story must leave their summer houses to go back to school. When they return to the city, these three children of wealthy families will resume the course of their predictable lives. One will study Commerce, the other wants to be a judge and the third in the military, like his father. But for now they rush through the last days of vacation without the supervision of their parents. And that’s when their lives will take a turn marked by the irruption of the beautiful and disconcerting Odette.
Sota els còdols, la platja is a story about politics and love, about the transition from youth to adulthood, about how the paths traced by destiny can be changed when there is a will to do so. Rabaté looks at the 1960s – often mythologized – with realism and what emerges is a story about appearances, social and moral codes, and about the weight of expectations that parents place on their children.
A beautiful and emotional book where the discovery of freedom is linked to the discovery of love and sexuality. Where individual emancipation is combined with the social change proclaimed by the anarchist movement. This comic book knows how to treat all these issues with lightness and depth at the same time. Rabaté uses the anecdote to build a story full of unexpected twists, which crystallize in a great love story that combines with a police plot and social criticism. Sober and without artifice. Sensual and with a point of humor.
Rabaté demonstrates an exemplary sense of storytelling in vignettes, with moments of pause, very expressive framing, well-portrayed characters –physically and psychologically– and evocative landscapes enhanced with an intelligent use of colour. The way in which the cartoonist portrays body language or captures the beauty of a nondescript gesture is also excellent. As for the story, it is a gear so well assembled that you don’t even notice the plot. Simply, almost without knowing how, the reader is trapped from the first pages and cannot put the book down until the end.
The year has just begun and we can already say that this comic will undoubtedly be one of the outstanding titles of 2023.
