Chloé Cruchaudet - Das falsche Geschlecht

2014, Chloé Cruchaudet, German,

"Das falsche Geschlecht" (Wrong Gender) is the German language version of "Mauvais genre" (Wrong Gender) by Chloé Cruchaudet.

Chloé Cruchaudet’s Das falsche Geschlecht (originally published in French as Mauvais genre) is a haunting, sensual, and deeply human graphic novel that explores identity, survival, and the collapse of traditional gender roles in the aftermath of war. Based on the true story of Paul and Louise Grappe, whose extraordinary and tragic lives were documented by historians Fabrice Virgili and Danièle Voldman in La Garçonne et l’Assassin, Cruchaudet’s adaptation transforms historical material into a visual and emotional masterpiece. Set against the backdrop of World War I and the liberated Paris of the 1920s, the book moves from horror to intimacy, from absurdity to tenderness, until all boundaries between love and delusion, freedom and confinement, begin to blur.

 

The story begins with Paul Grappe, an ordinary young Parisian who marries the vivacious Louise shortly before being drafted into the war. The front quickly turns his idealistic notions of heroism into unbearable torment. Cruchaudet’s sparse palette captures the suffocating greens and greys of the trenches, where Paul witnesses his comrades being mutilated and where he himself loses all sense of self. In a moment of madness, he cuts off his own finger to escape combat, but when the army orders him back to the front, he deserts. Returning to Paris, he finds refuge with Louise, who hides him in a small apartment, where the walls become both his protection and his prison.

 

Their love initially carries a spirit of rebellion, but claustrophobia soon sets in. Unable to step outside without risking his life, Paul begins to unravel psychologically. One night, out of desperation, he puts on Louise’s dress and ventures into the street. To his astonishment, no one recognizes him. The disguise offers both safety and an intoxicating sense of liberation. With Louise’s help, he perfects his transformation into “Suzanne,” a woman who can move freely through Paris. What begins as camouflage slowly becomes something far deeper, as Paul discovers pleasure, confidence, and even desire in his female persona. Louise, at first amused and complicit, becomes both jealous and fascinated as the line between husband and wife blurs.

 

Cruchaudet’s Paris is drawn with both affection and irony. In the cafés, cabarets, and parks, the city throbs with sensuality and danger. Suzanne finds a new kind of freedom among the night creatures of the Bois de Boulogne, where gender and morality dissolve into shadow. Her growing fascination with this world mirrors the shifting attitudes of the Roaring Twenties, when sexual liberty and self-reinvention seemed to define modernity. Yet, beneath the glamour, Cruchaudet hints at despair. The reader senses that Suzanne’s freedom is built upon trauma, that the war’s ghosts continue to haunt both body and mind.

 

When an amnesty for deserters is finally declared in 1925, Suzanne is free to become Paul again. But by then, the transformation has gone too far. The return to masculinity feels like an exile. The couple’s fragile intimacy collapses under the weight of resentment and confusion. The once-passionate lovers grow distant, their shared secret turning into a weapon. Paul begins to drink heavily and behaves violently, no longer fitting either role, man or woman. The story ends in tragedy when Louise, after years of humiliation and abuse, shoots her husband dead. In court, her lawyer portrays her as a battered wife, and the jury acquits her completely.

 

Cruchaudet’s genius lies not in sensationalism but in empathy. She refuses to turn Paul and Louise into heroes or villains. Instead, she presents them as flawed, yearning individuals trying to survive a world shattered by war and moral collapse. Her artwork mirrors this ambivalence. The lines are fluid and expressive, the composition constantly breaking the frame, as if the very structure of the page cannot contain the instability of identity. Red appears throughout the book as a visual leitmotif: a lipstick stain, a dress, a blush, a trace of blood. It symbolizes desire, femininity, and violence, reminding the reader that every transformation comes at a cost.

 

Although Das falsche Geschlecht tells a story from a century ago, it feels startlingly contemporary. The questions it raises about gender, performance, and authenticity resonate deeply in a modern context that continues to debate bodily autonomy and identity. Cruchaudet shows that gender is not only a disguise but also a space of discovery, a fragile construction that can both liberate and destroy. The war may have pushed Paul into women’s clothing, but what keeps him there is a yearning for another kind of self, one that society refuses to recognize.

 

When the book was released in France in 2013, it became a cultural phenomenon. Critics praised its historical insight, emotional subtlety, and artistic daring. It won the Audience Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2014, along with several other major prizes. More importantly, it sparked conversations about how art can portray the complexities of gender without judgment. Cruchaudet’s careful balance of tenderness and cruelty, eroticism and despair, makes the story both disturbing and unforgettable. 

 

Ultimately, Das falsche Geschlecht is not simply about a man who dresses as a woman to survive. It is a meditation on how war fractures identity, how love mutates under pressure, and how freedom can turn into another form of captivity. Paul’s tragedy is not that he became Suzanne, but that society allowed neither to exist. Through her elegant, melancholic art, Chloé Cruchaudet resurrects two lost souls who dared to reinvent themselves, only to be destroyed by the world that could not imagine them. The result is a masterpiece of graphic storytelling that transforms a scandalous historical footnote into a timeless reflection on the human need to be seen, loved, and free.

Available via avant-verlag.de

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