Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée, author of the film Dallas Buyers Club, has died at the age of 58, his agency announced on Sunday (December 26th). “Rest in peace, Jean-Marc Vallée. The world is much less interesting without you”, wrote the Hive Communication Collective agency on Instagram.
The film Dallas Buyers Club (2013) was Oscar nominated and won an Oscar for actors Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto. The film traces the true story of an American, macho and violent, who finds himself ill with AIDS. Knowing that he was doomed in the short term, he will do everything to import the first antiretroviral treatments, then banned, in the United States, and found one of the first groups of patients.
The Quebec director had recently obtained an Emmy for his series on the HBO television channel Big Little Lies (Little secrets, big lies) and was also praised for Sharp Objects. He directed the first season, seven episodes, carried by a quintet of stars: Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley and Zoë Kravitz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrMOOpXXy3o
In a completely different genre, Jean-Marc Vallée directed French star Vanessa Paradis in Café de Flore (2012), and especially charmed with his first film, CRAZY, fresco on a large family in Quebec in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Quebecer had a “prodigious talent“and was” lhe only filmmaker to have both opened (Demolition) and fenced (Victoria: the young years of a queen) the Toronto International Film Festival “, recalled its president, Cameron Bailey, on Twitter.
I had the good fortune to talk Jean-Marc Vallée a number of times over the past dozen years or so. Here’s what I learned about the tremendous, incendiary filmmaker who, really, was just getting started. https://t.co/f5xvclw57M
– Barry Hertz (@HertzBarry) December 27, 2021
“What tragic news. Jean-Marc Vallée moved me to CRAZY at Big Little Lies. He was extremely kind “, regretted the Prime Minister of Quebec François Legault, evoking a “exceptional artist“.
The Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, estimated that Jean-Marc Vallée had done “his brand in the cinema in Quebec and around the world“.”His films made us smile, cry, reflect and they marked our imagination“, he added.
Jean-Marc Vallée died suddenly at his home near Quebec City, according to US media on Friday the day after his death. The HBO channel declared itself “shocked by the announcement of his sudden death “.” Jean-Marc Vallee was a brilliant and conscientious director “, she added in a statement released by The Hollywood Reporter.
“Jean-Marc had bet on authenticity, doing things differently”, her co-producer, Nathan Ross, said in a statement. “The maestro will be missed but it’s heartwarming to know that the beauty of his style and the power of his work will outlive him.”