Successor but it's not that simple. So, in L'impudence des chiens, Ducoudray and Dumontheil glue these two facets of the time. Then take your wig out of the closet to read our chronicle of this grim and funny story.
A very painful breakdown
Edited by Delcourt, L'impudence des chiens is revealed from the incipit: " The marital bed will be without a shot the battlefield of the century to come. The reader will follow three characters. The Comte de Dardille was sued by his young wife, Amélie de Figule, who accused him of refusing sexual relations. The contemporary reader might be surprised by this procedure. In fact, she does not blame him for the lack of carnal pleasure but she fears that she will not have offspring. If she wins the case, she gets a divorce and half of the count's fortune. Panicked, the husband fears losing everything, his wife, his fortune and even worse his reputation. Indeed, to prove his vigour, he must submit to Congress: to satisfy his wife biblically under the eye of God certainly, but also of the three judges and an audience. To escape this infamy, he enlists the help of a marquis.
The problem is that the count is asexual. He seems totally bewildered and has no desire. Despite all the attempts of the marquis, nothing works because the count thinks only of war. It's strange but Freud would have loved to decipher all this. Is he homosexual? The marquis quietly broaches the question while the count is more surprised by the proposal. Restoring vigor is a challenge for the owner of a brothel because it is so rare. Later, the reader visits at night a garden of pleasures and discovers the agalmatophile or the love of statues. The more we advance, the more we discover original fantasies. However, The impudence of dogs is non-judgmental. On the contrary, benevolence draws a road leading to pleasure. We often smile and then laugh heartily at the total lack of gentleness of doctors and matrons during an auscultation.
A game of languages
As shown in the previous summary, L'impudence des chiens is a hilarious fable written by Aurélien Ducoudray and drawn by Nicolas Dumontheil. The screenwriter has worked several times in contemporary stories with The Groceryand science fiction with Bettie Hunter. Here he enjoys parodying the works of the Grand Siècle. Indeed, the book is organized as in classical theater in a prologue and then three acts.
Even if this is not the primary goal, the reader comes out enriched from the reading. We discover the pornographic subtext of the song in the moonlight. Indeed, The impudence of dogs also makes the piquant criticisms contained in libertine stories. This hedonism is also linguistic. Aurélien Ducoudray plays with the language of Molière. A coachman speaks like a book and the marquis makes alexandrines then he mocks the length and technicality of notarial acts. To describe sex, there is no vulgarity but the dialogues are decorated with metaphors: the count can no longer slash while he must deploy his abilities in genesis.
This lack of brutality is found in Nicolas Dumontheil's drawings despite some more explicit boxes. His rounded style adds softness and he multiplies the details by the decorations. The first page of The Impudence of Dogs parodies the illustrated tales with the three main characters in medallions. If the subject is comical, we see the graphic research on the outfits and villages still very medieval. We even cross Manet's Olympia and the Venus coming out of Botticelli's waters.
If The Impudence of Dogs is a journey into the past in the time of libertinism and religious censorship, it is also a fully topical story by presenting sexuality as a joyful walk with multiple stops. The humor is certainly grivois but never vulgar. The drawings have fun using grotesque figures but without animosity.
You can find such carnal stories on the site with the chronicles of The Itinerary of a Bitch and Faithless.
