Peau d’homme (Men’s Skin) by Hubert (Boulard) and Zanzim (Frédéric Leutelier)—the former as writer, the latter as illustrator—is a delicate, engaging, and unsettling graphic novel set in Renaissance Italy. The details are meticulous, the result of thorough historical research: from the hairstyles and headpieces (the hennin drawn exclusively on upper-class women) to the garments, brightly colored for the nobility and played on shades of brown or grey for everyone else. The artwork often evokes medieval paintings. The color palette turns blue in romantic scenes and red in violent ones, save for a piercing white: that of the naked body of Bianca, the protagonist, a beautiful young woman promised by her family in marriage to a stranger. The core of the narrative, divided into five chapters, is a family secret.
Blending comedy and musical, the film tells the story of Blanche, a princess promised in marriage against her will. With the help of a mysterious skin that allows her to take on a male appearance, she approaches her future husband in disguise and discovers the world from a new...
“We keep a secret. We possess a man’s skin. Once it is on your skin, no one will doubt that you are a young man. And that way, you will be able to move incognito through the world of men.” So says Teresa, Bianca’s aunt and godmother. It is from this secret passage into the realm of men that the story unfolds. The hypocrisy of relationships is relentlessly targeted, and across the various storylines, the full richness and variety of the LGBTQ+ spectrum emerges. For those seeking a learned reference, one might turn to Plato’s Symposium and Aristophanes’ myth of the original human, with its longing for lost unity and the quest for one’s other half, or perhaps to the cults and myths surrounding Hermaphroditus. The final chapter, titled Another Life, seems to open onto a joyful world where motherhood, marriage, relational freedom, and love can finally coexist.
