To evoke the name of the filmmaker Jean-Jacques Beineix is to immerse oneself in the 1980s, in Paris in particular, a city where he liked to film the popular districts and the corridors of the metro. A city that saw him born on October 8, 1946, and die on January 13, at the age of 75. In fact, the most significant films of the filmmaker – his first three feature films – are concentrated in this flashy decade which also saw Luc Besson “hatch” or, in a completely different register, Léos Carax – another filmmaker in love with the capital.
Beineix’s career was like fireworks, flamboyant and fleeting: there were Diva (1981), the first “feature” which revealed Richard Bohringer and Gérard Darmon and was a public success after receiving four awards at the Césars (1982), including that of “the first work” as it was called at the time (which became the César for best first film). The Caesarized film finally recorded more than two million admissions in France.
Followed a second “long”, The Moon in the Gutter (1983), with Gérard Depardieu, Nastassja Kinski and Victoria Abril, then a third, 37°2 in the morning (1986), which became a cult film (more than 3.6 million spectators in theaters), Béatrice Dalle making her first sensational appearance at the cinema – spotted by Dominique Besnehard – alongside Jean-Hugues Anglade. The following films will however be failures: Roselyne and the lions (1989), with Isabelle Pasco, IP5 – the island of pachyderms (1992), with Yves Montand, finally Deadly transfer (2001), with Jean-Hugues Anglade. A total of six feature films, and a few later attempts at screen adaptations that never saw the light of day.
Mauled by criticism
Also a screenwriter, dialogue writer, writer and producer, Jean-Jacques Beineix has always been mistreated by critics, who reproached him for the imagery of advertising clips, which were too polished, contrary to the New Wave which had freed itself from aesthetics. studios. The director of 37°2 did not rise up against the “Young Turks” (Chabrol, Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Rohmer) and recounted the shock produced on him The Four Hundred VSwhoops (1959), by Francois Truffaut.
Beineix defined himself as a self-taught director and quoted this sentence from Abel Gance as a program: “Each image must be a sun. » Of all filmmakers, Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999), the author of 2001, a space odyssey (1968) andClockwork Orange (1971), was the one that impressed him the most. Beineix also made documentaries, played the piano – the harassment, by Erik Satie –, was a painter, and was one of the founding members of the Society of Authors-Directors-Producers (ARP), which he directed between 1994 and 1995.
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