DISAPPEARANCE – French director Jean-Jacques Beineix has died at the age of 75, his family announces. It was he who revealed Béatrice Dalle to the general public with the sulfurous “37°2 in the morning”, in 1986.
Jerome Vermelin –
He had given a boost to French cinema in the early 1980s. Director Jean-Jacques Beineix died at the age of 75, following a long illness, his family announced to AFP on Friday. January 14. In his filmography, we note in particular the sulphurous 37°2 in the morning who revealed Béatrice Dalle to the general public in 1986. On Instagram, the actress salutes the memory of the one with whom she says she wrote “one of the most beautiful pages of my life“.
Born in Paris, failed at the entrance to IDHEC, the famous film school, after studying medicine, Jean-Jacques Beineix began his career as an assistant director for Jean Becker, Claude Zidi and Richard Berry. He goes behind the camera with a short film, Mr. Michel’s dog, in 1977, then three years later his first film, Diva, co-written by Jean Van Hamme based on a novel by Daniel Odier, with Richard Bohringer in the credits.
This romance between a young postman and a famous singer, which he recorded in secret, stands out with its flamboyant style. His detractors accuse him of borrowing from the advertising aesthetic, in vogue at the time. After a discreet start, the film won 4 Césars including that of the best first film and peaked at 2 million spectators.
On his way, the filmmaker continues with a more ambitious project, The moon in the gutter, shot in the legendary Italian studios of Cinecitta. Despite the presence in the casting of Gérard Depardieu, Nastassja Kinksi and Victoria Abril, the film presented at Cannes in 1983 was a critical and public failure.
From one extreme to the other, Jean-Jacques Beineix bounced back in 1986 with the greatest success of his career, 37°2 in the morning, based on the novel by Philippe Djian. Jean-Hugues Anglade embodies Zorg, a handyman who falls under the poisonous charm of Betty, interpreted by the beginner Béatrice Dalle. Torrid and violent, the film is prohibited for those under 18 but brings together more than 3.5 million spectators, becoming cult for an entire generation.
Unfortunately, its author will never experience the same heights again. Roselyne and the lions, in 1989, experienced a resounding flop. In November 1991, Yves Montand died on the set ofIP5: the island of pachyderms. Despite the ultimate performance of the sacred monster of French cinema, the public is not at the rendezvous when it comes out two years later. In 2001, Beineix reunited with Jean-Hugues Anglade for the thriller Deadly Transfer, without knowing that it will be his last fiction film.
After several aborted projects on the big screen, in France but also in Hollywood where he refuses Alien 3, he shot several documentaries and tried his hand at the theater in 2015 by mounting Kiki de Montparnasse at Lucerne. After writing his memoirs, The Buildings of Glory in 2016, he signed a single novel, Toboggan, published in 2020 by Michel Lafon.
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