In 1967, Jean-Luc Godard met Anne Wiazemsky, on the set of Robert Bresson’s film Random balthazar. The director was 34 years old at that time, the high school student and granddaughter of the writer François Mauriac was 18. If she rejected his advances at first sight, she wrote him a letter shortly afterwards, a declaration of love that goes initiate the start of their relationship. In his book A studious yearshe had recounted her relationship with the Franco-Swiss filmmaker who has just left us at the age of 91, delivering in detail her couple in their most intimate moments. The Obs published excerpts from his book.
Acclaimed novelist, Anne Wiazemsky used her pen to return to her marriage to Jean-Luc Godard. In the pages ofA studious yearshe recounts their first night: “Our bodies had immediately agreed, ‘found’, as he would tell me later. I realized that I had just really made love for the first time in my life, that I liked it. A world of pleasure opened before me, thanks to this man who loved me and whom I loved. The gratitude, the desire to kiss her, to get to know her body better, to give her everything of my own, all that made me dizzy.“
But if the idyll is powerful, it is also controversial. At that time, Anne Wiazemsky was a minor, and many years separated the lovers. Her mother Claire Mauriac is not thrilled with their couple, calling her daughter’s companion “sir”. One evening when he is about to take his young beloved to dinner, his mother violently objects: “I then saw in his eyes the disgust he inspired in him. A radical and definitive disgust. Even shaking his hand took effort.“Feeling humiliated to be treated like a little girl, she retains the reaction of the filmmaker, choosing humor:”It’s complicated to love a minor! Your mother will eventually get used to it.“
Their romance will continue with a small committee wedding in 1967 in Begnins in Switzerland. However, the events of May 1968 transform the man who led it into The Chinese as a young revolutionary. Deeply marked by the change that France was experiencing at that time, Jean-Luc Godard had difficulty reconciling his thoughts and his relationships with others. When he finds her on a Pasolini set in 1969, there are many tensions and they end up divorcing a year later.