19 years ago, on August 1, 2003, Marie Trintignant died at the age of 41 after being beaten by her husband, Bertrand Cantat, then a member of the group Noir Désir. For his father, Jean-Louis Trintignant (who died on Friday June 17 at the age of 91), it was the end of the world, of his world: “I died on August 1, 2003, the day Marie died”. “Inside me, everything is destroyed. I was supposed to come find her that night and I didn’t come. If I had been there, she probably wouldn’t have died,” he said in a collection of interviews To life, to death in 2018.
Already in 1970, the death of his daughter Pauline had been a tragedy for Jean-Louis Trintignant and his wife Nadine as he had confided in the book On the side of Uzes co-written with Andre Asseo in 2012 : “Nadine and I had rented an apartment in Rome for two months, during the filming of Conformist. One morning, I was going to shoot, I went to kiss Pauline in her crib. She was dead. We didn’t know how. I said to Nadine: ‘either we commit suicide or we agree to live for Marie.'”
“I had a magnificent complicity with Marie”
Jean-Louis Trintignant, who in the 80s had retired from the cinematographic world, had settled in Uzès in the Gard. In this refuge, however, it is impossible to forget Mary. “I had a magnificent complicity with Mariehe testifies in the book On the side of Uzes. I don’t know if there are people who have such a rich relationship with their daughter. Mary’s death was the greatest suffering of my life. Nothing in the world could have touched me more.” Questioned a few years after the death of Marie, he declared on RTL to have thought of suicide, as after the death of Pauline. “Afterwards, I was prostrate. Then came the strength, that of saying to oneself: Either I commit suicide or I continue to live.“, he said, avoiding the worst solution.
Jean-Louis Trintignant also spoke to The Express on his passionate relationship with his daughter Marie: “It’s a bit unfair this passion, but the love comes from both of us. We met at the right time. The moment when I wanted to be a father.”
Accomplices in life as in the cinema, Jean-Louis and Marie Trintignant shared the poster of eight films, directed mainly by Marie’s mother, Nadine Trintignant: My love, my love (1967), defense of knowledge (1973), The honeymoon (1976) or even Next summer (1985).