André Téchiné

Biography: life and films

André Téchiné is one of the most important of the post-Nouvelle Vague auteur filmmakers to come on the scene in the mid-1970s. Now in his seventies, he remains remarkably active and continues adding to the thirty or so films he has so far put his name to over the past four decades. Téchiné's cinema embraces a diverse mix of styles, from the coldly Brechtian feel of his early work to the warmer intimacy of later films, and encompasses a wide range themes of immense social importance, from racism and the AIDS pandemic, to the increasingly individualistic nature of society to the breakdown of the family unit. The one thing that connects Téchiné's films is a keen fascination for the fragility of human relationships, both of a romantic kind and between family members. It is the delicacy and sensitivity with which Téchiné unpicks relationships that makes his cinema so powerfully engaging and enduring.

André Téchiné was born on 13th March 1943, in Valence-d'Agen, a town in the Occitanie region in southern France. His was a fairly affluent family that ran a company manufacturing agricultural equipment. It was to escape the unhappiness of his years at boarding school in the 1950s that Téchiné developed his interest in cinema, which would develop into full-blown cinephilia by the time he was a teenager. He left home at the age of 19 to try to find a job in the film business in Paris. He began his career as a film critic, like his New Wave predecessors, serving a stint on the Cahiers du cinéma from 1964 to 1967.

During this time, Téchiné made two short films - Le Banquet (1965) and Les Oiseaux anglais (1965), and then went on to work as an assistant director on Les Idoles (1968), a musical directed by Marc'o, and Jacques Rivette's L'Amour fou (1969). It was in the course of these two assignments that he got to know the actress Bulle Ogier, whom he cast in a lead role in a stage production that he directed in February 1969 - Dacia Maraini's Un chantage au théâtre, performed at the Théâtre des Mathurins in Paris. He also made Ogier the subject of his first documentary, Paulina s'en va (1969). At this early stage in his career, Téchiné made brief appearances in two films: Jean-André Fieschi's L'Accompagnement (1969) and Jean Eustache's La Maman et la putain (1973).

After scripting Liliane de Kermadec's Aloïse (1975) André Téchiné directed what he considers his first film, Souvenirs d'en France (1975), a darkly comical portrayal of French society across four decades. Téchiné attracted more attention with his next film, Barocco (1976), a heavily stylised thriller which, with its expressionistic flourishes, feels more like a dream experience than a conventional film drama. With strong central performances from Gérard Depardieu and Isabelle Adjani, the film impressed the critics but feels cold and distant compared with his subsequent work. The influence of one of Téchiné's personal idols, Ingmar Bergman, is strongly felt in his next film, Les Soeurs Brontë (1979). With its austere compositions and intensely claustrophobic mood it effectively evokes the dull and repressive world from which the Brontë sisters sought to escape through their writing.

After his early experiments with form, Téchiné finally found his voice with his fifth feature, Hôtel des Amériques (1981), a skilful dissection of a romantic liaison that is doomed right from the start (not that the protagonists know this, of course). This was the first occasion the director worked with Catherine Deneuve (here admirably well partnered with Patrick Dewaere) - she would appear in six of his subsequent films. Then came the film which earned André Téchiné his international reputation and established him as one of the leading French filmmakers of his generation: Rendez-vous (1985). In a star-making role, Juliette Binoche plays an aspiring actress who, in her search for emotional security, becomes a plaything of some deeply flawed individuals and ends up finding fulfilment through art, not love. This bleak expression of the deceptive nature of desire won Téchiné the Best Director award at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.

In Le Lieu du crime (1986), André Téchiné tackles for the first time one of the recurring themes of his oeuvre - the disintegration of the family. A criminal intrigue is the pretext for a brutally honest exploration of the fraught relationship between a mother (Deneuve at her best) and her teenage son, two individuals who are unable to communicate. The director's next film, Les Innocents (1987), serves as a far from subtle metaphor for France's ambiguous relationship with North Africa. It's worth noting that it features Abdellatif Kechiche in a supporting role, some years before he went on to become a highly respected filmmaker.

A young man's search for personal fulfilment that leads him into some dark places is the subject of J'embrasse pas (1991), a grim and melancholic film that won its lead actor Manuel Blanc a César for his convincing performance in his first film role. In Ma saison préférée (1993), one of his best films, Téchiné serves up a depressing indictment of today's individualistic society and prompts reflection on how the elderly are now regarded by a selfish and materialistic generation. Les Roseaux sauvages (1994) was commissioned by French television as part of a series (Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge) but was released in cinemas and was the director's biggest commercial success. A poignant coming of age drama playing against the ominous backdrop of the Algerian War, this film has a significant autobiographical content and was noted for its sensitive portrayal of a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality. Les Roseaux sauvages received not only the Prix Louis-Delluc, it also took four Césars, winning in the categories of Best Director, Best Film, Best Screenplay and also Most Promising Actress (Élodie Bouchez).

After playing brother and sister in Ma saison préférée, Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteul become romantically entangled in Les Voleurs (1995), in which Téchiné makes an attempt to depart from the linear narrative but ends up with a muddled drama that is more confused and opaque than it needs to be. Téchiné repeated the experiment more successfully on his next film, Alice et Martin (1998), and in doing so crafts one of his more involving films about an intense love affair involving two ill-matched fugitives from society. Once again, Juliette Binoche turns in a sublime performance, this time partnered by Alexis Loret, who went on to have a busy career on television afterwards. In Loin (2001), Téchiné engages with a whole host of contemporary themes - illegal immigration, drugs trafficking, cultural barriers - but what makes it memorable is its authentic portrayal of several colourful individuals getting by in an increasingly fragmented world.

His popularity suffering a steady decline since the success of Les Roseaux sauvages, Téchiné reached a larger audience with his sumptuously shot wartime drama Les Égarés (2003), adapted from Gilles Perrault's novel Le Garçon aux yeux gris. This features Emmanuelle Béart and Gaspard Ulliel as two survivors of an aerial attack who discover their own private Garden of Eden in the midst of Nazi Occupied France. It is a touching and poetic work that once again allowed its author to delve into the complexities of human relationships. For his fifth collaboration with Catherine Deneuve, Les Temps qui changent (2004), Téchiné partnered her with Gérard Depardieu in another intimate drama that poses the question whether past relationships can ever be reawakened. Shot on low resolution digital video, the film's ugly presentation cruelly detracts from the strong performances and the result is one of Téchiné's least successful experiments with style.

Téchiné was back on form with Les Témoins (2007), a drama showing how a group of close friends respond to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. Despite its grim subject matter (it shows a young man slowly dying from the disease), this is one of the director's most lyrical and beguiling films, and rarely has cinema broached the AIDS issue with as much sensitivity and honesty. Over the next decade, Téchiné made a number of diverse films - two based on real-life events (La Fille du RER (2009), L'Homme qu'on aimait trop (2014)), one adapted from a crime novel (Impardonnables (2011)) - but his most noteworthy offering is another incisive coming of age drama, Quand on a 17 ans (2016). This enchanting film - the director's 22nd feature for the cinema - leaves no doubt that, even in his seventies, André Téchiné is still a force to be reckoned with.

Filmography

Click here to view complete list of films...