In August 2003, Marie Trintignant died after being beaten by her spouse at the time Bertrand Cantat, a member of the group Noir Désir. She was then 41 years old. A drama to which Marie’s father, Jean-Louis Trintignant (who died on Friday June 17 at the age of 91), had never fully recovered: “Inside me, everything is destroyed. I was supposed to come and find her that night and I didn’t come. If I had been there, she probably wouldn’t have died. This guilt weighs on me a lot because I’m pretty sure I’m right,” he said in a collection of interviews To life, to death in March 2018.
The death of his daughter Marie had been an additional trauma for Jean-Louis Trintignant who had already been confronted with the death of his second daughter Pauline, some thirty years earlier: “Nadine (Trinting) and I had rented an apartment in Rome for two months, while we were filming Le Conformiste. 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”he confided to his friend André Asséo in the book On the side of Uzes in 2012.
Bertrand Cantat, the sworn enemy of Jean-Louis Trintignant
In 2011, Jean-Louis Trintignant participated in the Festival d’Avignon in which Bertrand Cantat was also invited. The presence of the ex-member of Noir Désir had shocked many people, Jean-Louis Trintignant the first. In an interview given to Figaro at the time, the father of the late Marie Trintignant reacted forcefully: “I don’t understand how he could appear on a stage this summer in Avignon. What he did was kill a woman. And for that he did four years in prison. I found him sympathetic but he was unable to assume anything after the tragedy, the death of Marie in 2003. And today he’s a man I hate, and I’m gonna say one thing, he behaved like shit and he’s the man I hate the most in the world“, he insisted.
Subsequently, in an interview with iTélé, Jean-Louis Trintignant had again mentioned Bertrand Cantat and seemed a little less virulent even if he still hated the singer: “I would change sidewalks if I saw him (…) I can’t say it’s hate, but he’s someone I don’t want to meet.“
Today, father and daughter reunite in heaven and will become closer than ever.