André Téchiné
Encyclopedia
André Téchiné
André Téchiné (born 13 March 1943 at Valence-d'Agen (Tarn-et-Garonne
) in France
), is a French screenwriter
and film director
. He has had a long and distinguished career that places him among the best post-New Wave
French film directors.
He belongs to a second generation of French film critics associated with Cahiers du cinéma
who followed François Truffaut
, Claude Chabrol
, Jean-Luc Godard
and others from criticism into film-making. Téchiné is noted for his elegant and emotionally charged films that often delve into the complexities of human condition and emotions.
One of the trademarks of his filmography is the lyrical examination of human relations in a sensitive but unsentimental way, as can be seen in his most acclaimed films: My Favorite Season
(1993) and Wild Reeds (1994).
region, department of Tarn-et-Garonne
, France
. His family, of Spanish ancestry, owned a small business making agricultural equipment. He grew up in the south west French country side and in his adolescence acquired a passion for films. From 1952 to 1959 he went to a Catholic boarding school in Montauban
. He was allowed to leave the school only on Sunday afternoons when he would go to the cinema, although he often had to return before the screening ended. From 1959 he attended a secular state school, which exposed him to a different culture, with Marxist teachers, a cine club and a film magazine, La Plume et l'écran, to which he contributed. "Films were my only opening to the world," Téchiné explained in an interview. "They were my only possibility of escaping my family environment and my boarding school. It was probably dangerous because, through movies, I learned how the world works and how human relations work. But it was magical, and I was determined to follow the thread of that magic."
At nineteen he moved to Paris
in order to look for a career in filmmaking. He failed the entrance examination at France's most prominent film school, but started to write reviews for the prestigious Cahiers du cinéma
where he worked for four years (1964–1967). His first article was about Truffaut’s
The Soft Skin, published in July 1964.
Téchiné's first filmmaking experience emerged from a theatrical milieu. He went on to become assistant director for Marc'O in Les Idoles (1967), a film version of an experimental play. This film was edited by Jean Eustache
; Téchiné made an uncredited walk on appearance in Eustache's film La Maman et la putin (1972). Téchiné was also assistant director to Jacques Rivette
, (his editor at Cahiers du Cinema) on L’Amour Fou
(1969).
Téchiné is noted for his elegant and emotionally charged films that often delve into the complexities of human condition and emotions. An intimist flavor pervades his work. One of the trademarks of his filmography is the lyrical examination of human relations in a sensitive but unsentimental way. Influenced by Roland Barthes
, Bertolt Brecht
, Ingmar Bergman
, William Faulkner
and the cinematic French New Wave
, the originality of Téchiné's films lies in his subtle exploration of sexuality and national identity, as he challenges expectations in his depictions of gay relations, the North African dimensions of contemporary French culture, and the center-periphery relationship between Paris
and his native Southwest
. Shy and ascetic-looking, Téchiné does not opine on political issues and rarely appears on television. Fear of flying prevents him from attending most film openings or festivals more than a train ride from his Paris
apartment overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens.
"I never know how each film will end," Téchiné explains. "When I'm filming, I shoot each scene as if it were a short film. It's only when I edit that I worry about the narrative. My objective is to tell a story, but that's the final thing I do."
, disconcerted audiences and was not actually released until 1975. In the meantime, Téchiné experimented with references to different genres and auteurs while providing screenplays for other directors, including Liliane de Kermadec
's Aloïse
.
’s The Magnificent Ambersons
and filmed in the director's native village. It is a highly compressed history of a small-town family from early in the century through the Resistance and on to May 1968. Téchiné explored the relationship between the grand scope of life and more personal histories. Notably, the film stars Jeanne Moreau
; the director's work has since been distinguished by offering key roles to respected actresses.
(1976), a crime drama, rooted in expressionist surrealism. A boxer who has accepted and then turned down a huge bribe from a politician to tell a lie that will influence an election is killed by a hired assassin. The boxer's girlfriend eventually falls in love with the killer while trying to remake him into the image of her slain lover. The film elicited critical plaudits for its elegant look.
(1979). A profile of the famous Brontë sisters, the film’s heavy, repressive mood evokes the harshness and injustice of the life that the Brontë
sisters endured. The passion and color that is so vivid in their novels was absent from their daily existence, and the film’s appropriately gloomy cinematography – which uses dreary earth colors to emphasize the cold, remote feel – evokes this with great poignancy. The film features an all-star cast: Isabelle Adjani
, Marie-France Pisier
and Isabelle Huppert
as Emily, Charlotte and Anne Brontë, with Pascal Gregory as their ill-fated brother Branwell.
(1981), set in Biarritz
, explores the strained relationship between a successful middle-aged woman and an unfulfilled and emotionally unbalanced man in a story of a hopelessly ill-matched love. This film marked a turning point in Téchiné’s career, anchoring his work from then on in a more realistic universe from the previous romantic one. For the first time Téchiné let his actors improvise, a practice he has continued ever since, adjusting his scripts to accommodate the new material. “From Hotel des Amériques onwards my films are no longer genre films,” he said. “My inspiration is no longer drawn from the cinema”. This film also started a long productive collaboration with Catherine Deneuve
. "There are some directors who are more feminine than others, like Téchiné, like Truffaut. They are an exceptional gift to actresses," Deneuve said about their collaboration.
(1985), a sexy noir melodrama replete with the seductive surface of the era. In the film a would-be actress, Nina, fleeing her provincial home for Paris, enters a turbulent love relationship with a sadistic, self-destructive young actor, who caused the death of his former girlfriend. When the actor himself is killed in an accident, or possible suicide, his former mentor/director, and father of the dead girlfriend, determines to cast the inexperienced Nina as the female lead in 'Romeo and Juliet', a role his deceased daughter played. The film is ultimately a vehicle for exploring the violent intensity of certain emotional attachments and their ability to cause one's life to spin off in unexpected directions. By now a key director of the post-New Wave
, this film earned Téchiné the Cannes Festival Best Direction Award while helping launch the career of Juliette Binoche
.
. In the rustic vicinity of a small provincial town, a young boy helps an escaped criminal. The boy (a highly troubled youth himself) disaffected by his parents' divorce, lives with his mother and grandparents while the father lives nearby. The escaped convict commits murder to save the boy from harm but gets involved with the mother. By the time the boy is to have his first communion, the mother--trapped in a humdrum existence--has fallen in love with the convict and wants to run away with him.
(1987) a young woman, born and raised in Northern France, is visiting the Mediterranean city of Toulon
for the first time. She is prompted by two events: the wedding of her sister, and the disappearance of her brother. He is a deaf-mute who supports himself as a pickpocket under the tutelage of a young Arab and an older bisexual married man with a weakness for young Arabs. The girl meets them and finds herself attracted to the young Arab and the older man's son, who is also bisexual like his father. She is soon torn between the two in a romantic and sexual dilemma that mirrors France's political turmoil regarding the nation's growing Arab population.
(I don't kiss) (1991) is a bleak, melancholic portrait of a young man searching and failing to find meaning in his life. An idealistic seventeen-year-old youth leaves his home in the rural southwest of France, hoping to make a career as an actor in Paris
. After an auspicious start in the French capital, he soon discovers that he has no talent as an actor, and soon loses both his job and his room. In the end, he has to hustle to make a living as a male prostitute. He falls in love with a young prostitute, but the relationship has terrible consequences for him.
(Ma saison préférée) (1993) is a dark and somber story of middle-aged estranged siblings, a provincial lawyer (brother) and a skilled surgeon (sister). They have begun to come to terms with what they have become professionally and personally when their aging mother begins to decline after a stroke. Téchiné himself describes Ma Saison Préférée as a film "about individuality and the coldness of the modern world." It earned acclaim when it was screened in competition at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival
.
in 1962, their political and sexual awakening with the effect of the Algerian War as backdrop. The director, inspired by his own adolescence, delivers a limpid and sensual work, bathed by the light of southwest France. Téchiné works with certain sets of themes including family bonds, homosexuality, and exile. Wild Reeds is his most autobiographical movie; like the teen-age Téchiné, the main character, François, attends an all-male boarding school. While part of the story revolves around François's discovery that he is gay, Téchiné said his principal interest was to evoke how the Algerian war of independence was felt in a rural corner of France."If I hadn't been able to inject this, if I had only been making a film about adolescent coming of age, it wouldn't have interested me at all," he explained.
Wild Reeds was a hit at the 1994 César award
ceremony, winning four out of eight nominations (best film, best director, best script, and best newcomer for Élodie Bouchez
). It also won the Prix Delluc in 1994. This was Téchiné’s sixth film released in the USA (in 1995—following French Provincial (Souvenirs d'en France), Barocco, Hôtel des Amériques, Rendez-vous and Scene of the Crime) and his most autobiographical picture to date. Wild Reeds won the New York Film Critics Award and National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
-style exploring family and amorous ties. It postulates a fatalistic world bound by family origins and intense romantic longings in which every character is trapped into becoming a thief of one kind or another, emotionally as well as existentially. This film earned Téchiné nominations for the César and Golden Palme at Cannes, as well as a host of other honors.
. As in his earlier film Les Voleurs, Téchiné told the story out of sequence.
(Far) (2001) was shot on digital video
. Employing natural light for the most part, it uses a slightly degraded video image to create a sense of collapse and unease. The film is set in Tangier and is told in three "movements", with the sections marked by chapters. The plot turns around three characters: a truck driver importing goods between Morocco and France tempted to cross the strait to Spain smuggling drugs; his young Arab friend desperate to go to Europe; and the driver’s Jewish ex-girlfriend who is hesitant about her future migration to Canada
. During the three days they are together, fateful decisions must be made.
. While Téchiné usually braids together several intersecting stories, this wartime drama traces a single linear tale with only four characters. In 1940, an attractive widow flees Nazi-occupied Paris for the South with her small daughter and teen-age son; they are soon joined by a mysterious young man. The foursome find refuge from the war in an abandoned house.
, oscillating between two worlds and two ideas about the meaning of experience and the enduring power of love. A middle age construction supervisor comes to Tangier to search for the love of his youth, lost many years ago. She is now married and with a grown up son. They eventually cross paths in a supermarket. Téchiné weaves together a half dozen subplots, creating a set of variations on the theme of divided sensibilities tugging one another into states of perpetual unrest and possible happiness.
and Julie Depardieu, dealt with a group of friends and lovers confronting the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s; it was released in spring 2007. It opened in the U.S. spring 2008 under the title The Witnesses. New York Press critic Armond White, who has been Téchiné's most fervent U.S. supporter, hailed The Witnesses: "No filmmaker has a greater appreciation of human diversity than Téchiné, whose socially complex melodramas always feature age, gender and race through liberté, égalité, fraternité. That's Téchiné's radical vision of France--postmodern, post-Colonial and post-gay liberation with all those issues in motion."
train by black and Arab youths who supposedly mistook her for a Jew. The story is based on a real event that took place in France in 2004. Téchiné dissects the psychological circumstances and consequences surrounding this bold lie in a rich drama. The director worked, in part, from Jean Marie Besset’s play about the scandal, RER, as well as from news reports and court records. “The story became the mirror of all French fears”, Téchiné commented, “a revelation of what we call the ‘collective unconscious.’ How an individual’s lie is transformed into truth with respect to the community at large and its fears. It's a truly fascinating subject.”
André Téchiné (born 13 March 1943 at Valence-d'Agen (Tarn-et-Garonne
Tarn-et-Garonne
Tarn-et-Garonne is a French department in the southwest of France. It is traversed by the Rivers Tarn and Garonne, from which it takes its name.-History:...
) in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
), is a French screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
and film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
. He has had a long and distinguished career that places him among the best post-New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
French film directors.
He belongs to a second generation of French film critics associated with Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
who followed François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
, Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s...
, Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
and others from criticism into film-making. Téchiné is noted for his elegant and emotionally charged films that often delve into the complexities of human condition and emotions.
One of the trademarks of his filmography is the lyrical examination of human relations in a sensitive but unsentimental way, as can be seen in his most acclaimed films: My Favorite Season
My Favorite Season
My Favorite Season is a 1993 French drama film directed by André Téchiné and starring Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Auteuil and Marthe Villalonga. The story concerns two middle age siblings, a brother and sister, who resume their fragile relationship when they are forced to care for their ailing mother...
(1993) and Wild Reeds (1994).
Life
André Téchiné was born on 13 March 1943 at Valence-d'Agen, a small town in the Midi-PyrénéesMidi-Pyrénées
Midi-Pyrénées is the largest region of metropolitan France by area, larger than the Netherlands or Denmark.Midi-Pyrénées has no historical or geographical unity...
region, department of Tarn-et-Garonne
Tarn-et-Garonne
Tarn-et-Garonne is a French department in the southwest of France. It is traversed by the Rivers Tarn and Garonne, from which it takes its name.-History:...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. His family, of Spanish ancestry, owned a small business making agricultural equipment. He grew up in the south west French country side and in his adolescence acquired a passion for films. From 1952 to 1959 he went to a Catholic boarding school in Montauban
Montauban
Montauban is a commune in the Tarn-et-Garonne department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in southern France. It is the capital of the department and lies north of Toulouse....
. He was allowed to leave the school only on Sunday afternoons when he would go to the cinema, although he often had to return before the screening ended. From 1959 he attended a secular state school, which exposed him to a different culture, with Marxist teachers, a cine club and a film magazine, La Plume et l'écran, to which he contributed. "Films were my only opening to the world," Téchiné explained in an interview. "They were my only possibility of escaping my family environment and my boarding school. It was probably dangerous because, through movies, I learned how the world works and how human relations work. But it was magical, and I was determined to follow the thread of that magic."
At nineteen he moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in order to look for a career in filmmaking. He failed the entrance examination at France's most prominent film school, but started to write reviews for the prestigious Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
where he worked for four years (1964–1967). His first article was about Truffaut’s
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
The Soft Skin, published in July 1964.
Téchiné's first filmmaking experience emerged from a theatrical milieu. He went on to become assistant director for Marc'O in Les Idoles (1967), a film version of an experimental play. This film was edited by Jean Eustache
Jean Eustache
Jean Eustache was a French filmmaker. During his short career, he completed numerous shorts, in addition to a pair of highly regarded features, of which the first, The Mother and the Whore, is considered a key work of post-Nouvelle Vague French cinema.In his obituary for Eustache, the influential...
; Téchiné made an uncredited walk on appearance in Eustache's film La Maman et la putin (1972). Téchiné was also assistant director to Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette is a French film director. His most well known films include Celine and Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse and the cult film Out 1....
, (his editor at Cahiers du Cinema) on L’Amour Fou
L'Amour fou
L'amour fou is a 1969 movie directed by Jacques Rivette.L'amour fou follows the dissolution of the marriage between Claire, an actress , and Sebastien, her director . It is black and white with two different film gauges employed at different times throughout the film...
(1969).
Téchiné is noted for his elegant and emotionally charged films that often delve into the complexities of human condition and emotions. An intimist flavor pervades his work. One of the trademarks of his filmography is the lyrical examination of human relations in a sensitive but unsentimental way. Influenced by Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
, Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
, Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
, William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
and the cinematic French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
, the originality of Téchiné's films lies in his subtle exploration of sexuality and national identity, as he challenges expectations in his depictions of gay relations, the North African dimensions of contemporary French culture, and the center-periphery relationship between Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and his native Southwest
Midi-Pyrénées
Midi-Pyrénées is the largest region of metropolitan France by area, larger than the Netherlands or Denmark.Midi-Pyrénées has no historical or geographical unity...
. Shy and ascetic-looking, Téchiné does not opine on political issues and rarely appears on television. Fear of flying prevents him from attending most film openings or festivals more than a train ride from his Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
apartment overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens.
"I never know how each film will end," Téchiné explains. "When I'm filming, I shoot each scene as if it were a short film. It's only when I edit that I worry about the narrative. My objective is to tell a story, but that's the final thing I do."
Paulina s'en va (1969)
André Téchiné made his debut as director with: Paulina s'en va (Paulina is going) (1969) in which the title character drifts aimlessly, struggling to find a way out of her disenchantment and find her calling in life. Initially conceived as a short, the film was shot in two periods, over one week in 1967 and two weeks in 1969. The film, shown at that year's Venice Film FestivalVenice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
, disconcerted audiences and was not actually released until 1975. In the meantime, Téchiné experimented with references to different genres and auteurs while providing screenplays for other directors, including Liliane de Kermadec
Liliane de Kermadec
Liliane de Kermadec is a French film director and screenwriter. She has directed nine films since 1965.-Filmography:* Le murmure des ruines * La très chère indépendance du Haut Karabagh * La piste du télégraphe...
's Aloïse
Aloïse (film)
Aloïse is a 1975 French drama film directed by Liliane de Kermadec. It was entered into the 1975 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* Isabelle Huppert - Aloïse jeune / Aloïse as a child* Delphine Seyrig - Aloïse adulte / Aloïse as an adult...
.
Souvenirs d'en France (1974)
After working in television and theater, Téchiné first came to prominence with his second film: Souvenirs d'en France (French Provincial) (1974) a curious mix of black comedy, romantic drama and nostalgia with a distinctly Brechtian imprint. The film was inspired by Orson WellesOrson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
’s The Magnificent Ambersons
The Magnificent Ambersons (film)
The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1942 American drama film written and directed by Orson Welles. His second feature film, it is based on the 1918 novel of the same name by Booth Tarkington and stars Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead and Ray Collins...
and filmed in the director's native village. It is a highly compressed history of a small-town family from early in the century through the Resistance and on to May 1968. Téchiné explored the relationship between the grand scope of life and more personal histories. Notably, the film stars Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau is a French actress, singer, screenwriter and director.She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française...
; the director's work has since been distinguished by offering key roles to respected actresses.
Barocco (1976)
Téchiné's demonstrated his flair for richly textured, atmospheric storytelling with his next film, the aptly titled thriller BaroccoBarocco
Barocco is a 1976 French romantic thriller film, directed by André Téchiné. The film stars Isabelle Adjani, Gérard Depardieu and Marie-France Pisier. Identity, redemption and resurrection are the themes of the film. The plot follows a young woman who convinces her boxer boyfriend to accept a bribe...
(1976), a crime drama, rooted in expressionist surrealism. A boxer who has accepted and then turned down a huge bribe from a politician to tell a lie that will influence an election is killed by a hired assassin. The boxer's girlfriend eventually falls in love with the killer while trying to remake him into the image of her slain lover. The film elicited critical plaudits for its elegant look.
Les sœurs Brontë (1979)
Three years later, Téchiné took on biography with Les sœurs Brontë The Bronte SistersThe Bronte Sisters
The Bronte Sisters is a 1979 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Isabelle Adjani, Marie-France Pisier and Isabelle Huppert. The film tells the story of the famous Brontë sisters: Charlotte, Emily and Anne and their brother Branwell...
(1979). A profile of the famous Brontë sisters, the film’s heavy, repressive mood evokes the harshness and injustice of the life that the Brontë
Brontë
The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family associated with Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte , Emily , and Anne , are well-known as poets and novelists...
sisters endured. The passion and color that is so vivid in their novels was absent from their daily existence, and the film’s appropriately gloomy cinematography – which uses dreary earth colors to emphasize the cold, remote feel – evokes this with great poignancy. The film features an all-star cast: Isabelle Adjani
Isabelle Adjani
Isabelle Yasmine Adjani is a French film actress and singer. Adjani has appeared in 30 films since 1970. She holds the record for most César Awards for Best Actress with five, for Possession , One Deadly Summer , Camille Claudel , Queen Margot and Skirt Day...
, Marie-France Pisier
Marie-France Pisier
Marie-France Pisier was a French actress. She appeared in numerous films of the French New Wave and twice earned the national César Award for Best Supporting Actress.-Life and career:...
and Isabelle Huppert
Isabelle Huppert
Isabelle Anne Madeleine Huppert is a French actress who has appeared in over 90 film and television productions since 1971. She has had 14 films in official competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and won the Best Actress Award twice, for Violette Nozière and La pianiste . She is also the most...
as Emily, Charlotte and Anne Brontë, with Pascal Gregory as their ill-fated brother Branwell.
Hôtel des Amériques (1981)
Hôtel des AmériquesHôtel des Amériques
Hôtel des Amériques is a 1981 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Catherine Deneuve and Patrick Dewaere. The film, set in Biarritz, tells the ill fated romance of mismatch lovers...
(1981), set in Biarritz
Biarritz
Biarritz is a city which lies on the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in south-western France. It is a luxurious seaside town and is popular with tourists and surfers....
, explores the strained relationship between a successful middle-aged woman and an unfulfilled and emotionally unbalanced man in a story of a hopelessly ill-matched love. This film marked a turning point in Téchiné’s career, anchoring his work from then on in a more realistic universe from the previous romantic one. For the first time Téchiné let his actors improvise, a practice he has continued ever since, adjusting his scripts to accommodate the new material. “From Hotel des Amériques onwards my films are no longer genre films,” he said. “My inspiration is no longer drawn from the cinema”. This film also started a long productive collaboration with Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Deneuve is a French actress. She gained recognition for her portrayal of aloof and mysterious beauties in films such as Repulsion and Belle de jour . Deneuve was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1993 for her performance in Indochine; she also won César Awards for that...
. "There are some directors who are more feminine than others, like Téchiné, like Truffaut. They are an exceptional gift to actresses," Deneuve said about their collaboration.
Rendez-vous (1985)
After making a television production: La Matiouette ou l'arrière-pays, (1983), Téchiné returned to critical attention with Rendez-vousRendez-vous (film)
Rendez-vous is a 1985 French drama film directed by André Téchiné. The film stars Juliette Binoche, Lambert Wilson, Wadeck Stanczak and Jean-Louis Trintignant. Rendez-vous premiered at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival where it won the award for Best Director. The film had a total of 766,811 admissions...
(1985), a sexy noir melodrama replete with the seductive surface of the era. In the film a would-be actress, Nina, fleeing her provincial home for Paris, enters a turbulent love relationship with a sadistic, self-destructive young actor, who caused the death of his former girlfriend. When the actor himself is killed in an accident, or possible suicide, his former mentor/director, and father of the dead girlfriend, determines to cast the inexperienced Nina as the female lead in 'Romeo and Juliet', a role his deceased daughter played. The film is ultimately a vehicle for exploring the violent intensity of certain emotional attachments and their ability to cause one's life to spin off in unexpected directions. By now a key director of the post-New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
, this film earned Téchiné the Cannes Festival Best Direction Award while helping launch the career of Juliette Binoche
Juliette Binoche
Juliette Binoche is a French actress, artist and dancer. She has appeared in more than 40 feature films, been recipient of numerous international accolades, is a published author and has appeared on stage across the world. Coming from an artistic background, she began taking acting lessons during...
.
Le lieu du crime (1986)
Le lieu du crime (1986) (Scene of the Crime) begins with a shot right out of the opening of Great ExpectationsGreat Expectations
Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published in serial form in the publication All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It has been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times....
. In the rustic vicinity of a small provincial town, a young boy helps an escaped criminal. The boy (a highly troubled youth himself) disaffected by his parents' divorce, lives with his mother and grandparents while the father lives nearby. The escaped convict commits murder to save the boy from harm but gets involved with the mother. By the time the boy is to have his first communion, the mother--trapped in a humdrum existence--has fallen in love with the convict and wants to run away with him.
Les innocents (1987)
In his next film, Les InnocentsLes Innocents (film)
Les Innocents is a 1987 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Sandrine Bonnaire, Simon de La Brosse and Abdel Kechiche. The plot, follows a girl who looking for her runaway brother, finds several people who change her life. The film was partially inspired by a William...
(1987) a young woman, born and raised in Northern France, is visiting the Mediterranean city of Toulon
Toulon
Toulon is a town in southern France and a large military harbor on the Mediterranean coast, with a major French naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region, Toulon is the capital of the Var department in the former province of Provence....
for the first time. She is prompted by two events: the wedding of her sister, and the disappearance of her brother. He is a deaf-mute who supports himself as a pickpocket under the tutelage of a young Arab and an older bisexual married man with a weakness for young Arabs. The girl meets them and finds herself attracted to the young Arab and the older man's son, who is also bisexual like his father. She is soon torn between the two in a romantic and sexual dilemma that mirrors France's political turmoil regarding the nation's growing Arab population.
J'embrasse pas (1991)
J'embrasse pasJ'embrasse pas
I Don't Kiss is a 1991 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Manuel Blanc, Emmanuelle Béart and Philippe Noiret. The film is a grim, melancholic portrait of a young man searching and failing to find meaning in his life. The film had a total of 472,187 admissions in France...
(I don't kiss) (1991) is a bleak, melancholic portrait of a young man searching and failing to find meaning in his life. An idealistic seventeen-year-old youth leaves his home in the rural southwest of France, hoping to make a career as an actor in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. After an auspicious start in the French capital, he soon discovers that he has no talent as an actor, and soon loses both his job and his room. In the end, he has to hustle to make a living as a male prostitute. He falls in love with a young prostitute, but the relationship has terrible consequences for him.
My Favorite Season (1993)
My Favorite SeasonMy Favorite Season
My Favorite Season is a 1993 French drama film directed by André Téchiné and starring Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Auteuil and Marthe Villalonga. The story concerns two middle age siblings, a brother and sister, who resume their fragile relationship when they are forced to care for their ailing mother...
(Ma saison préférée) (1993) is a dark and somber story of middle-aged estranged siblings, a provincial lawyer (brother) and a skilled surgeon (sister). They have begun to come to terms with what they have become professionally and personally when their aging mother begins to decline after a stroke. Téchiné himself describes Ma Saison Préférée as a film "about individuality and the coldness of the modern world." It earned acclaim when it was screened in competition at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival
1993 Cannes Film Festival
- Jury :* Louis Malle * Claudia Cardinale * Inna Churikova * Judy Davis * Abbas Kiarostami * Emir Kusturica * William Lubtchansky * Tom Luddy * Gary Oldman * Augusto M...
.
Wild Reeds (1994)
The following year, Téchiné had his greatest success to date with Wild Reeds (Les roseaux sauvages) (1994). The film was commissioned by French television as one of part of a series of eight films entitled Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge, although it was shown first at cinemas. This is a bucolic tale of teenage self-discovery centered on the inner turmoil of four teenagers staying at a boarding school in AquitaineAquitaine
Aquitaine , archaic Guyenne/Guienne , is one of the 27 regions of France, in the south-western part of metropolitan France, along the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees mountain range on the border with Spain. It comprises the 5 departments of Dordogne, :Lot et Garonne, :Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Landes...
in 1962, their political and sexual awakening with the effect of the Algerian War as backdrop. The director, inspired by his own adolescence, delivers a limpid and sensual work, bathed by the light of southwest France. Téchiné works with certain sets of themes including family bonds, homosexuality, and exile. Wild Reeds is his most autobiographical movie; like the teen-age Téchiné, the main character, François, attends an all-male boarding school. While part of the story revolves around François's discovery that he is gay, Téchiné said his principal interest was to evoke how the Algerian war of independence was felt in a rural corner of France."If I hadn't been able to inject this, if I had only been making a film about adolescent coming of age, it wouldn't have interested me at all," he explained.
Wild Reeds was a hit at the 1994 César award
César Award
The César Award is the national film award of France, first given out in 1975. The nominations are selected by the members of the Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma....
ceremony, winning four out of eight nominations (best film, best director, best script, and best newcomer for Élodie Bouchez
Élodie Bouchez
Élodie Bouchez-Bangalter is a French actress. She is best known in the United States for her role as Renée Rienne on the fifth and final season of the television show Alias...
). It also won the Prix Delluc in 1994. This was Téchiné’s sixth film released in the USA (in 1995—following French Provincial (Souvenirs d'en France), Barocco, Hôtel des Amériques, Rendez-vous and Scene of the Crime) and his most autobiographical picture to date. Wild Reeds won the New York Film Critics Award and National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Les voleurs (1996)
Further acclaim greeted the director in 1996 with Les voleurs (Thieves) (1996), an ambitious and complex crime drama. The film jumps through time and switches narrative perspectives in a RashomonRashomon (film)
The bandit's storyTajōmaru, a notorious brigand , claims that he tricked the samurai to step off the mountain trail with him and look at a cache of ancient swords he discovered. In the grove he tied the samurai to a tree, then brought the woman there. She initially tried to defend herself with a...
-style exploring family and amorous ties. It postulates a fatalistic world bound by family origins and intense romantic longings in which every character is trapped into becoming a thief of one kind or another, emotionally as well as existentially. This film earned Téchiné nominations for the César and Golden Palme at Cannes, as well as a host of other honors.
Alice et Martin (1998)
Téchiné followed this success with Alice et Martin (Alice and Martin) (1998), a haunting love story between two emotionally damaged outsiders that marked his reunion with Juliette BinocheJuliette Binoche
Juliette Binoche is a French actress, artist and dancer. She has appeared in more than 40 feature films, been recipient of numerous international accolades, is a published author and has appeared on stage across the world. Coming from an artistic background, she began taking acting lessons during...
. As in his earlier film Les Voleurs, Téchiné told the story out of sequence.
Loin (2001)
LoinLoin (film)
Loin is a 2001 French-Spanish drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Stephane Rideau, Lubna Azabal and Mohamed Hamaidi. The film, set in Tangier in a three day period, tells the story of three young friends taking critical decisions about their uncertain future.-Plot:For the past few...
(Far) (2001) was shot on digital video
Digital video
Digital video is a type of digital recording system that works by using a digital rather than an analog video signal.The terms camera, video camera, and camcorder are used interchangeably in this article.- History :...
. Employing natural light for the most part, it uses a slightly degraded video image to create a sense of collapse and unease. The film is set in Tangier and is told in three "movements", with the sections marked by chapters. The plot turns around three characters: a truck driver importing goods between Morocco and France tempted to cross the strait to Spain smuggling drugs; his young Arab friend desperate to go to Europe; and the driver’s Jewish ex-girlfriend who is hesitant about her future migration to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. During the three days they are together, fateful decisions must be made.
Strayed (2003)
After two less successful but still ravishing efforts, André Téchiné received acclaim with Strayed (Les égarés) (2003), an adaptation of the novel Le Garçon aux yeux gris, by Gilles PerraultGilles Perrault
Gilles Perrault is a left-wing French writer and journalist.He attended the Collège Stanislas de Paris and then studied at the Institut d'études politiques, eventually becoming a lawyer, a profession he worked in for five years....
. While Téchiné usually braids together several intersecting stories, this wartime drama traces a single linear tale with only four characters. In 1940, an attractive widow flees Nazi-occupied Paris for the South with her small daughter and teen-age son; they are soon joined by a mysterious young man. The foursome find refuge from the war in an abandoned house.
Changing Times (2004)
Changing Times (Les temps qui changent) (2004) is a warmhearted exploration of cultural collision in contemporary MoroccoMorocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
, oscillating between two worlds and two ideas about the meaning of experience and the enduring power of love. A middle age construction supervisor comes to Tangier to search for the love of his youth, lost many years ago. She is now married and with a grown up son. They eventually cross paths in a supermarket. Téchiné weaves together a half dozen subplots, creating a set of variations on the theme of divided sensibilities tugging one another into states of perpetual unrest and possible happiness.
Les Témoins (2007)
Les Témoins starring Emmanuelle Béart, Michel Blanc, Sami BouajilaSami Bouajila
Sami Bouajila is a French award-winning actor of Tunisian origin.Bouajila's grandfather was a Berber born in Tripoli, Libya and immigrated to Tunisia. Bouajila's father decided to immigrate to France in 1956. Sami was born and grew up in Échirolles, a suburb south of Grenoble...
and Julie Depardieu, dealt with a group of friends and lovers confronting the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s; it was released in spring 2007. It opened in the U.S. spring 2008 under the title The Witnesses. New York Press critic Armond White, who has been Téchiné's most fervent U.S. supporter, hailed The Witnesses: "No filmmaker has a greater appreciation of human diversity than Téchiné, whose socially complex melodramas always feature age, gender and race through liberté, égalité, fraternité. That's Téchiné's radical vision of France--postmodern, post-Colonial and post-gay liberation with all those issues in motion."
The Girl on the Train (2009)
Téchiné latest film, The Girl on the Train (La fille du RER), centers on a naive girl who fabricates a story about being attacked on a suburban ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
train by black and Arab youths who supposedly mistook her for a Jew. The story is based on a real event that took place in France in 2004. Téchiné dissects the psychological circumstances and consequences surrounding this bold lie in a rich drama. The director worked, in part, from Jean Marie Besset’s play about the scandal, RER, as well as from news reports and court records. “The story became the mirror of all French fears”, Téchiné commented, “a revelation of what we call the ‘collective unconscious.’ How an individual’s lie is transformed into truth with respect to the community at large and its fears. It's a truly fascinating subject.”
Filmography
| Year | English title | Original title | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1969 | Paulina is Leaving | Paulina s'en va | Original Script. | |
| 1975 | French Provincial French Provincial French Provincial is a 1975 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Jeanne Moreau, Michel Auclair and Marie-France Pisier. The film presents an overview of French life and politics though the changes within one family in southwestern France from the 1930s through the 1970s.-Plot :At... |
Souvenirs d'en France | Original Script. | |
| 1976 | Barocco Barocco Barocco is a 1976 French romantic thriller film, directed by André Téchiné. The film stars Isabelle Adjani, Gérard Depardieu and Marie-France Pisier. Identity, redemption and resurrection are the themes of the film. The plot follows a young woman who convinces her boxer boyfriend to accept a bribe... |
Barocco |
|
|
| 1979 | The Bronte Sisters The Bronte Sisters The Bronte Sisters is a 1979 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Isabelle Adjani, Marie-France Pisier and Isabelle Huppert. The film tells the story of the famous Brontë sisters: Charlotte, Emily and Anne and their brother Branwell... |
Les sœurs Brontë | ||
| 1981 | Hotel America Hôtel des Amériques Hôtel des Amériques is a 1981 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Catherine Deneuve and Patrick Dewaere. The film, set in Biarritz, tells the ill fated romance of mismatch lovers... |
Hôtel des Amériques | ||
| 1985 | Rendez-vous Rendez-vous (film) Rendez-vous is a 1985 French drama film directed by André Téchiné. The film stars Juliette Binoche, Lambert Wilson, Wadeck Stanczak and Jean-Louis Trintignant. Rendez-vous premiered at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival where it won the award for Best Director. The film had a total of 766,811 admissions... |
Rendez-vous |
Cannes Film Festival The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals... : Award for Best Director Best Director Award (Cannes Film Festival) The Best Director Award is an award presented at the Cannes Film Festival. It is chosen by the jury from the 'official section' of movies at the festival. It was first awarded in 1946.... César Award The César Award is the national film award of France, first given out in 1975. The nominations are selected by the members of the Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma.... : Most Promising Actor (Wadeck Stanczak) |
|
| 1986 | The Scene of the Crime Scene of the Crime (1986 film) Scene of the Crime ' is a 1986 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Catherine Deneuve, Wadeck Stanczak and Danielle Darrieux... |
Le lieu du crime | ||
| 1987 | The Innocents Les Innocents (film) Les Innocents is a 1987 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Sandrine Bonnaire, Simon de La Brosse and Abdel Kechiche. The plot, follows a girl who looking for her runaway brother, finds several people who change her life. The film was partially inspired by a William... |
Les Innocents |
César Award The César Award is the national film award of France, first given out in 1975. The nominations are selected by the members of the Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma.... : Best Supporting Actor (Jean-Claude Brialy) |
|
| 1991 | I don’t Kiss J'embrasse pas I Don't Kiss is a 1991 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Manuel Blanc, Emmanuelle Béart and Philippe Noiret. The film is a grim, melancholic portrait of a young man searching and failing to find meaning in his life. The film had a total of 472,187 admissions in France... |
J'embrasse pas |
César Award The César Award is the national film award of France, first given out in 1975. The nominations are selected by the members of the Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma.... : Most Promising Actor (Manuel Blanc) |
|
| 1993 | My Favorite Season My Favorite Season My Favorite Season is a 1993 French drama film directed by André Téchiné and starring Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Auteuil and Marthe Villalonga. The story concerns two middle age siblings, a brother and sister, who resume their fragile relationship when they are forced to care for their ailing mother... |
Ma saison préférée | Original Script
|
|
| 1994 | Wild Reeds | Les roseaux sauvages | Original Script
César Award The César Award is the national film award of France, first given out in 1975. The nominations are selected by the members of the Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma.... : Best Film César Award The César Award is the national film award of France, first given out in 1975. The nominations are selected by the members of the Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma.... : Best Director César Award The César Award is the national film award of France, first given out in 1975. The nominations are selected by the members of the Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma.... : Best Writing César Award The César Award is the national film award of France, first given out in 1975. The nominations are selected by the members of the Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma.... : Most Promising Actress (Élodie Bouchez) Los Angeles Film Critics Association The Los Angeles Film Critics Association was founded in 1975. Its main purpose is to present yearly awards to members of the film industry who have excelled in their fields. These awards are presented each January... : Best Foreign Language Film National Society of Film Critics The National Society of Film Critics is an American film critic organization. As of December 2007 the NSFC had approximately 60 members who wrote for a variety of weekly and daily newspapers.-History:... (USA): Best Foreign Language Film |
|
| 1996 | Thieves Thieves (film) Thieves is a 1996 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Daniel Auteuil, Catherine Deneuve and Laurence Côte. The plot follows a cynical police officer, who comes from a family of thieves, and a lonely philosophy professor, both romantically involved with a self-destructive petty... |
Les voleurs | Original Script | |
| 1998 | Alice and Martin | Alice et Martin | Original Script | |
| 2001 | Far Loin (film) Loin is a 2001 French-Spanish drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Stephane Rideau, Lubna Azabal and Mohamed Hamaidi. The film, set in Tangier in a three day period, tells the story of three young friends taking critical decisions about their uncertain future.-Plot:For the past few... |
Loin | Original Script. | |
| 2003 | Strayed | Les égarés | Loosely based on Gilles Perrault Gilles Perrault Gilles Perrault is a left-wing French writer and journalist.He attended the Collège Stanislas de Paris and then studied at the Institut d'études politiques, eventually becoming a lawyer, a profession he worked in for five years.... 's novel The Boy With Grey Eyes |
|
| 2004 | Changing Times | Les temps qui changent | Original Script. | |
| 2007 | The Witnesses The Witnesses The Witnesses is a 2007 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Michel Blanc, Sami Bouajila, Emmanuelle Béart and Johan Libéreau. The film is set in Paris in 1984, the lives of a closely knit group of friends is disrupted with the sudden outbreak of AIDS epidemic. They are witnesses... |
Les Témoins | Original Script
César Award The César Award is the national film award of France, first given out in 1975. The nominations are selected by the members of the Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma.... : Best Supporting Actor (Sami Bouajila) |
|
| 2009 | The Girl on the Train | La fille du RER | Original Script | |
| 2011 | Impardonnables Impardonnables Impardonnables is a 2011 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring André Dussollier, Carole Bouquet, Mélanie Thierry. The film is an adaptation of Philippe Djian’s novel Unforgivable which received the Jean Freustié award in 2009. It was previously called theangelsTerminus... |
Unforgivable | Based on Philippe Djian Philippe Djian Philippe Djian is a popular French author of Armenian descent.Djian graduated from the ESJ Paris. After a period of wandering and odd jobs, he published a volume of short stories, 50 contre 1 , and then the novels Bleu comme l'enfer and Zone érogène before gaining fame with his subsequent novels... ’s novel Unforgivable |