Evane Hanska, writer and actress, is dead

Cheeky and vivacious novelist, appearance rather than actress in a few more or less forgotten films, secondary character of Montparnasse in the 1970s, Evane Hanska had been one of the companions of Jean Eustache, the director of The Mom and the Whore (1973). His figure of a drunken dandy runs through some of his books, like an unforgettable memory, a remorse, a wound. In one of her last messages on Twitter, posted on November 26, 2020, depressed and sick, she wrote: “Everyone is snoozing, if I could do the same. ” She passed away on April 27, at the age of 77, in Paris.

Born Evelyne-Anne Pedrotti on April 4, 1944 in Choisy-le-Roi (Val-de-Marne), she is a rebellious teenager in a family where feelings are rarely expressed. His father, originally from Algeria, is a tiler. His mother, an office worker. From her childhood and adolescence, she keeps the traces left by a reduced affection and rousing too regularly given.

She emancipated herself, married briefly in 1969 with a stuntman. “Eruptive and very anarchizing redhead”, according to a friend of that time, she dreams of a career as a singer and records a unique 45-rpm produced by Mouloudji, which no one remembers and performs in a few cabarets. She also took acting lessons with actor Yves Furet, a follower of Stanislavski’s method.

Modest origins

He is a fuzzy character, a silhouette in a Paris still in black and white. We say it “Endowed with a crazy charm but a sickly shyness”. Its Wikipedia file (which gave birth to it in 1960 …) only retains a few appearances in cinematographic panouilles such as The love life of the invisible man (1971), The Maffia of Pleasure (1971), The Michetonneuse (1972) to which are added, from 1975, small roles at the end of credits (The cakes De Pont-Aven, in 1972, a grim film by Joël Seria), and in more arty signed by Liliane de Kermadec, Pierre Jallaud, Maurice Dugowson, René Gilson. Not a word about her work as a writer, for which posterity should be grateful to her.

It was in the mid-1970s that she met Jean Eustache. He took up residence at Closerie des Lilas, an intellectual brasserie at 6e district of Paris. Friends who look like him escort him. They taste like cynicism, songs from Damia, and shimmering scarves. The Narbonne director drowns his spleen in Jack Daniel’s and baccarat at the Casino d’Enghien (Val-d’Oise). The heartbreaking business failure My little lovers (1974) annihilated it.

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