Patrice Chéreau

Biography: life and films

Patrice Chéreau was born in Lézigné, Maine-et-Loire, France on the 2nd November 1944. The youngest son of a couple of painters, he became fascinated by film and drama at an early age and started directing plays at school when he was 15. He began his long career as a professional theatrical director in 1964, creating the Théâtre de Sartrouville in Paris in 1966. Having staged his first opera in 1969, he was invited to work at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan. For the next four decades, Chéreau would be actively involved in directing plays and operas, although he also found time to make a dozen or so films which added further lustre to his reputation.

Chéreau's first film, La Chair de l'orchidée (1975) is a stylised thriller oddity adapted from a novel by James Hadley Chase, a compelling central performance from Charlotte Rampling making up for a torturously convoluted plot. This was followed by an intense realist drama, Judith Therpauve (1978) featuring a remarkable Simone Signoret. As interesting as these first two films are, they represent minor entries in Chéreau's oeuvre and it was not until his third film, L'Homme blessé (1983), that the director was able to impose his own auteur identity on the big screen. Chéreau's most personal work for the cinema, this compelling film drama won him a César in 1984 for its screenplay and revealed an actor of considerable promise, Jean-Hugues Anglade, in the role of a tormented young gay man.

After Hôtel de France (1987), inspired by a Chekhov play, Chéreau directed his best-known film, La Reine Margot (1994). A lavish historical drama set at the time of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, renowned for its gory detail, this film was awarded the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1994. Chéreau received a Best Director César for his next film, Ceux qui m'aiment prendront le train (1998), a thoroughly engrossing ensemble drama featuring a glittering cast. Then came the aptly titled Intimacy (2001), the only film that he made in English, which took the Golden Berlin Bear at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival.

The trauma of coping with a terminal illness is a subject that Chéreau handled sensitively in his next film, Son frère (2003), winner of the Berlin Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival. This was followed by Gabrielle (2005), adapted from a novel by Joseph Conrad, and starring Isabelle Huppert and his real-life partner Pascal Greggory. Chéreau concluded his filmmaking career with his darkest and most pessimistic study in human desire, Persécution (2009) with Jean-Hugues Anglade playing a similarly tormented character to one he portrayed in his first Chéreau film.

Patrice Chéreau died in Paris, France on 7th October 2013, after battling against lung cancer for several years, aged 68. His last work was an ambitious staging of Richard Strauss's opera Elektra at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence on July 2013. Although during his lifetime Chéreau was widely acclaimed as a theatrical director, it is for his film work that he will achieve enduring renown - skilfully woven dramas which dissect the human psyche with clinical precision whilst revealing a profound, unwavering compassion for his fellow man.

Filmography

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