If we had told you one day that you would see Sandrine Rousseau, Éric Piolle and Yannick Jadot twerking together, you would not have believed it. Well it took place, Saturday evening, at the Elysée Montmartre in Paris, during the meeting to launch the European campaign of Marie Toussaint, the head of the EELV list. Finally meeting: show “for the living” called “Pulsations”. It was a bit sold like that by the environmentalist general staff. So, faced with a poster worthy of a one-woman show, 20 minutes put on his best theater critic glasses.
We expected surprises, there were some. But if you wanted a play other than the one that environmentalists have always performed, in substance as well as in form, you have wasted your Saturday evening. Let’s start at the beginning: the first part. We know it well, it’s always too long, “Pulsations” was no exception. An ecological fan service, sometimes combative, sometimes contemplative, like the international lawyer Valérie Cabanes to defend the rights of nature: “I am water, I am an atom of oxygen, an atom of hydrogen. I am the source, I am the tree of life. I am bacteria, I am plant, I am fungus, I am animal. I am amniotic fluid. I am body. I am water and water is me…” The fans will appreciate it, the others aren’t there anyway.
Twenty minutes of originality
This long review of almost all the eco-friendly references was abruptly interrupted by the dancers from Booty Therapy, who came to twerk on stage. The arrival of these three young women on stage largely disconcerted the critics one evening. Especially since the dancers found themselves dumping Marine Tondelier, Marie Toussaint and Sandrine Rousseau from the stage, heated by the passage to the Sônge decks. Let’s be honest: we laughed a lot. Not the dancers, but the incongruity of seeing them there, and especially when they decided to make the room dance. It’s not easy to make the stiffest of ecologists dance, but Marie Toussaint and her second on the list, David Cormand, looked very comfortable.
There you have it, that was the twenty minutes of originality of the evening. A little short, especially when what follows are two speeches behind a lectern and in front of a tricolor flag, a European flag, by Marine Tondelier, the national secretary of Europe Ecology – The Greens, and Marie Toussaint. Given the poster, one could have imagined a leader of the green list alone on stage, wandering around it, why not in the room, dialoguing with projected images. Faced with the promises, it’s true, the criticism had somewhat made its own film.
Against programming or setbacks?
Too bad because Marie Toussaint did not necessarily appear at ease in this strict exercise. Certainly, female politicians are always at a disadvantage in this area as the references to “performers” are male. We must take this into account in our criticism. But the potential glimpsed during the speech by the head of the environmentalist list during the Le Havre Summer Days in August has not yet blossomed. His declamation, more than a speech, was often mechanical, rarely playful. Not enough to stir up the crowd, even that of the convinced present.
Marie Toussaint returned to her idea of a campaign that promotes gentleness in politics. “At this mention, some smile. ”She continues with her sweetness thing.” Yes I continue. And I’m just getting started…”, she assumed. For her, it is the “horizon” to offer to Europeans. She is not entirely wrong when she “observes” that “when it overflows from its bed, it is never us that anger brings to power, but on the contrary the worst populists, the worst reactionaries”. But, if more than three months after exposing it for the first time, you still have to justify your choice of campaign, that’s not exactly a good sign. If you have to explain, it’s obviously because we haven’t understood well.
Overall, the promise was only partly kept: it quickly became pulsating. In this show with truly sustainable development (almost three and a half hours), we have not yet seen how the environmentalists intended to fill the room beyond the fans most often won over for a long time. “It will be something that resembles us,” explained the day before a party executive who did not want to say too much. But that’s the problem: the big green raouts often only talk to green people and they’re happy with that. Gentleness, it’s true that it’s counter-programming that can catch the eye, given what’s on the agenda for the European elections in France and the rest of the Union. Be careful that this does not become a setback, like launching a campaign six months before the deadline. For an election which, at best, will interest six weeks before.