A sour feel-good romantic comedy!
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Because in life nothing is easy, Scarlett is stuck at Heathrow airport by the snow, with her sister Melie, two days before Christmas.
Because in her life everything is complicated, Scarlett goes by mistake in the men bathroom and stumbles upon William, a cynical and provocative Englishman, whose phlegm and charm are what Great Britain does best.
The hours of waiting allow them to introduce themselves. When all flights are canceled, William offers the sisters to spend Christmas at his place, near Kensington High Street. An invitation at first quite innocent but who will lead the two young women in the heart of a Christmas Eve full of emotions and surprises...
Not that easy talks with wit and thoughtfulness about family, mourning, love and engagement.
Family comedy
Christmas tale
Acid humour
Strong emotions London
Love story
Release: Mach 2017
Foreign and paperbacks publishers' interest:
Rights sold in Germany
Law teacher in a prestigious school in Lyon, Lucie Castel escapes reality by writing. As dynamic as she is skilled, she expresses her creativity through many artistic projects she likes to handle all at the same time. Not that easy is her first novel.
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SCARLET ARCHER / Jessican Chastain
Civil status: single – 29 – older sister, from Brittany.
Job: architect.
Quality: big sens of family and duty. Loyal and brave.
Default : chronically dishonest, has a tendency to flee any emotion, thinks she can carry all the unhappiness of the world on her shoulders.
Quest: be worthy of a father she just lost and protect mother and sister.
Particularity: thinks that the English people are not as any other human being, proof of that is that they live on an island.
MELIE ARCHER / Dakota Fanning
Civil status: single – 27 – younger sister, from Brittany.
Job : sex-therapist.
Quality: has a gift to read people souls.
Defect: thinks that another dimension exists and has decided to live there.
Quest: that people stop to lie to themselves.
Particularity: thinks that the bunny she had as a teenager reincarnates in each other bunnies she has, as long as she name it after a dramatic disease.
LA MERE DES SŒURS ARCHER / Susan Sarrandon
Civil status: widow – 58, from Sicily.
Quality: be a perfect overwhelming mother.
Defect: be a perfect overwhelming mother.
Quest: the happiness of her daughters.
Particularity: thinks that everything is explainable with signs she finds everywhere around her. She is convinced that the Devil is always at work and especially in public places. She is obsessed by the movie Gone with the wind.
WILIAM HILL / Tom Hiddleton
Civil status: widower – 32 – older brother, from London.
Job : owner of an art gallery.
Quality: loyal, brave, resilient, sens of principles.
Defect: rigid and sarcastic to the extreme.
Quest: to free himself of his familly, let go of his late wife and stop to feel guilty about an incident with his brother when they were young.
Particularity: thinks life has already given him her best and the rest is only a succession of "not)to-bads".
THOMAS HILL / Mark Gatiss
Civil status: has a boyfriend – 30 – younger brother, from London.
Quality: effusive, joyful, generous and loving.
Defect: has never been able to free himself from his mother's tyranny, which is why he hides is homosexuality.
Quest: be able to be who he is.
Particularity: thinks that most people are barbaric, not being able to make the difference between apple juice and Cristal Champagne.
LENA HILL / Lena Headey
Civil status: married – 55 – older sister, from London.
Quality: elegant, social, well mannered, chic.
Defect: abusive, tyrannical, sour, frustrated and deeply unhappy.
Quest: keep her power over her family and keep controlling her environment.
Particularity: thinks that most people are idiots.
LIZZIE HILL / Helen Mirren
Civil status: widow – 72 – William and Thomas granny, from Paris.
Quality: loving, generous, mischievous.
Defect: doesn't think for a second about the consequences of her acts and let her own emotions first before anyone sensitivity.
Quest: shut her daughter's mouth.
Particularity: thinks the world is a vast playground in which its wholesome to mess around.
Synopsis VO – Pas si simple (Lucie Castel)
Desperate to get back to their mother in Brittany for a first Christmas without their father, Scarlett and her sister Mélie are stuck in a snowy Heathrow airport. Scarlett, stressed out by her conversation with her mother, walks into the men’s bathrooms and meets William, a cynical and provocative Englishman who (we will soon learn) is a widower. All three get to talk as they wait for an announcement by the airline before going their separate ways to sleep at the hotel. In the middle of the night, Scarlett wakes up and goes down to the lounge bar to occupy herself during long hours of insomnia; here she meets William again where their conversation leads to a passionate kiss. Troubled, Scarlett prefers to leave.
The next day the news comes: the flights are canceled. William invites Scarlett and Mélie to spend Christmas Eve with him at his house on Kensington Street. They accept and meet William’s brother, Thomas, in the middle of a conjugal crisis with his boyfriend. A short while later, William’s whole family shows up unannounced: you would cut the tension with a knife. Things only get worse when Thomas, who has never come out to his mother (a tyrannical and infantilizing woman), passes Scarlett off as his girlfriend. From the absent father with his head stuck in the paper to the icy, terrifying mother while of course not forgetting the brazen grandmother and a depressed aunt, William’s family seems pretty... unique. Scarlett and Mélie somehow manage to more or less fit in to this off-the-cuff dinner which quickly becomes a show of shattering revelations about the grandmother’s past and a passionate adventure she had with her husband’s secretary.
That evening, Scarlett joins William in his bedroom and they spend the night together. All is perfect, until William’s mother surprises them the next morning. Thomas admits his lie and his homosexuality. Scarlett and Mélie are about to leave to take the ferry when they discover that their mother hasn’t waited for them in Brittany but come to join them in London. They go to meet her at Saint Pancras and spend a few days together while Scarlett and William keep their distance. Scarlett is still stricken with grief for her father, William for his wife; it just isn’t the right time to embark on something which seems so fragile. As she gets ready to go back to France with her sister and mother, Scarlett sees William: he has come to convince her to give their story a chance.
This is a modern love story taking place in London in winter. Everything is magnified by the snow, the silent night and beautiful lights. It is the perfect set to feel Christmas magic and spirit, all the best to write a caustic and funny story.
The house where the action takes place is a beautiful Victorian house located in Kensington.
The book
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