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      ‘The Wounded Man’: Dark Night, Lost Soul

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      In its unflinching depiction of a French teenager’s violent gay awakening, this 1983 film is among Patrice Chéreau’s most confrontational works.The radical director Patrice Chéreau was a triple-threat who earned praise and courted controversy with his risk-taking plays, operas and films. In its unflinching depiction of a French teenager’s gay awakening, “The Wounded Man” is among his most confrontational works.The film, which premiered in Cannes in 1983 and was released in the United States two years later, has a mainly underground reputation (unmentioned in Chéreau’s 2013 New York Times obituary) and so its current revival at Anthology Film Archives is something of an event.Set in a drab provincial city in France that, by the movie’s end, resembles a vast public loo, “The Wounded Man” signals its vanguard ambitions at the onset. The first head-on shot of a worn hausfrau packing a suitcase might have been lifted from “Jeanne Dielman”; a blast from avant-garde jazz artist Albert Ayler’s sax heralds Henri (Jean-Hugues Anglade) and his family racing for a bus to the train station from which his younger sister will leave for her student vacation.Leaving his family in the waiting room, Henri begins furtively cruising in the crowded terminal without exactly being sure of just what it is that he wants. His characteristic move is to stare, recoil, run and return. Dashing about like a mouse in a maze, he attracts the attention of Bosmans, a well-dressed, middle-aged masochist (Roland Bertin) who may be a doctor, and Jean, a charismatic roughneck (Vittorio Mezzogiorno) who gratifies Bosmans by beating him up in a toilet stall and seemingly pimps for the station’s abundant young hustlers.Bosmans and Henri are both obsessed with Jean, although Bosmans has a yen for Henri as well. Given the rough and tumble — physical as well as psychic — they absorb, any one of them could be the title character. All three are ruled by impulse but only Bosmans is the slightest bit introspective: “There are things you have to do to regret them later on,” he explains. Jean sets up Henri as bait in one appalling scene. He also brings him home to his long-suffering girlfriend (Lisa Kreuzer) after which Henri pilfers Jean’s outfit and begins living in the station.According to a profile of Chéreau published in The New York Times before the movie’s American release, “The Wounded Man” was inspired by Jean Genet’s quasi-autobiographical book “The Thief’s Journal.” Its obsessive characters, abrupt transitions, abstract narrative and hyper-naturalistic attention to detail also recall the French nouvelle romans of Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet.The movie is both stylized and visceral. “The Wounded Man” has nearly as much nudity (all of it male) and graphic sex as “Intimacy,” Chéreau’s “kitchen sink” riff on the anonymous coupling of “Last Tango in Paris.” Still, the careful framing of frenzied activity gives the movie a measure of detachment. (Janet Maslin’s Times review found it “solemn to a fault” and consequently “laced with a certain amount of inadvertent comedy.”)Appearing a couple of years into the AIDS epidemic, “The Wounded Man” was criticized both for its violence and its tormented vision of gay love. Henri’s approach-avoidance ballet inevitably climaxes in a dance of death. Chéreau’s willingness to plumb that abyss mirrors that of his protagonist.The Wounded ManJan. 5-12, Anthology Film Archives, Manhattan; anthologyfilmarchives.org. More

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      ‘Emily in Paris’ Star Lily Collins On Her Own Trauma Haircut

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      The cast also talked about berets and big life choices at a screening and reception at the French Consulate General to celebrate Season 3.It was a gloomy, rainy 40-degree evening, but on a blue carpet inside the French Consulate General on the Upper East Side before a special screening of Season 3 of “Emily in Paris” last week, the cast was as colorful as the show.Lucien Laviscount, who plays Emily’s British boyfriend, Alfie, flashed a grin as he strolled along the line of reporters in a neon pink suit with matching sneakers. Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, who plays Emily’s French boss, Sylvie, cocked an eyebrow coyly at the cameras as she tilted her head to show off a big silver arrow piercing her right ear above an asymmetrical black gown.Kate Walsh, who plays Emily’s American boss, Madeline, struck a pose in a long white gown, thrusting out her left leg to showcase a daring thigh-high slit above a sheer black mesh panel. She was accompanied by her fiancé, Andrew Nixon.The show’s star, Lily Collins, appeared in a sparkling white long-sleeved minidress covered with silver bows, black tights and sparkling silver platform heels, and the blunt bangs her character, Emily, cuts in the first episode of the new season. (“Trauma bangs,” as Emily’s roommate Mindy, played by Ashley Park, terms them.)Emily is under pressure at the beginning of the third season of the Netflix series, which returns Wednesday. She faces big choices at work and in love. Should she stick with her Chicago boss, Madeline, at Savoir or join her French boss, Sylvie, at her new marketing firm? And should she hold out hope for the unavailable Gabriel, played by Lucas Bravo, or embrace a long-distance relationship with her flame in London, Alfie?Ms. Collins and Ms. Park said they found it relatable that Emily would reach for the scissors amid paralyzing indecision.“I had a life change haircut when I was, I think, 26,” Ms. Collins said. “I cut all my hair off — it was a pixie haircut — and I went to the Vanity Fair Oscars party and people were like, ‘What happened?’”The actress and model Camille Razat and her partner, the photographer Etienne Baret.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesLucien Laviscount and Lucas Bravo, who are “Emily in Paris” cast members.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesMs. Park, who wore a purple-and-black zebra print gown and black latex boots, said that when she was in seventh grade, she wanted wavy hair. “But I got a perm, and it was way too much, so I had to wear my hair in this topknot that I called ‘the pineapple’ for a year!” said Ms. Park, her dark brown eyes set off by bold purple eye shadow.Jeremy O. Harris, the “Slave Play” playwright who plays the designer Gregory Dupree on the show, didn’t hesitate when asked if Emily should return to Chicago.“She just needs to get away from men,” he said, dressed in a white patterned jumpsuit and long-sleeved red shrug.“There’s too much romance in Paris,” he added. “I think she should stay in Europe, but I want to see ‘Emily in Berlin’ or ‘Emily in Italy.’”The playwright Jeremy O. Harris plays the designer Gregory Dupree in “Emily in Paris.”Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesDarren Star, who created the series, said the show will be sticking to its title, though — at least for this season.“Emily is in Paris for the moment,” said Mr. Star, who wearing a black suit. The series was renewed for a fourth season, and, he hopes, it will extend beyond that.“If they want us back, we’re coming back,” he said. “I think there’s more story to tell.”Paris has, of course, proven thus far an inexhaustible sense of amusement for viewers as Emily navigates cultural differences like a double cheek kiss greeting and an office that doesn’t open before 10:30 a.m.“Emily going into the office that early was definitely funny,” said Camille Razat, who plays Camille, a Parisian socialite and a rival for Gabriel’s affections. Ms. Razat wore a long-sleeved red dress with matching opera gloves. “We work to live, not live to work,” she said.The French actor William Abadie agreed. He plays Antoine, the owner of a perfume company that is a client of Savoir’s. “I live in America, and I came here because I wanted to be an actor, but also because I respect the professionalism,” he said.The actor William Abadie.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesDarren Star, the creator of “Emily in Paris.”Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesThe show’s French and American cast members shared one thing, though: affection for the beret, the round, flattish felt cap that Emily wears at least half a dozen of in the show’s first two seasons.“I have lots of berets,” said Mr. Harris, his eyes lighting up.“I have a winter beret, a summer beret. …” Ms. Walsh said.The show’s French cast members had little personal experience wearing them, though they were not opposed to the idea.“Why not?” said Mr. Bravo, who was wearing a black velvet suit.“I never wear them,” Mr. Arnold said. “I think I would,” he added, “But I like my hair too much.”Quick Question is a collection of dispatches from red carpets, gala dinners and other events that coax celebrities out of hiding. 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      Jean-Marie Straub, Uncompromising Filmmaker, Is Dead at 89

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      Emerging from the French New Wave, driven by artistic purity, he and his wife and directing partner, Danièle Huillet, didn’t care if audiences walked out on their films.Jean-Marie Straub, a celebrated filmmaker aligned with the French New Wave who sparked critical debate with films he made with his wife, Danièle Huillet, that were known for their aggressively cerebral subject matter, Marxist leanings and anti-commercial sensibility, died on Sunday at his home in Rolle, Switzerland. He was 89.The Swiss National Film Archive announced his death.“The Straubs,” as they were often called (although they preferred Straub-Huillet as a professional moniker), emerged in the 1950s from the same circle of revolutionary French filmmakers as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, a friend over the years who lived nearby in Rolle until his death in September.The New Wave directors upended moviemaking conventions by channeling their cinephilic theories into auteur-driven works that reflected the anti-authoritarian sentiments of postwar France. Mr. Straub and Ms. Huillet took those same impulses in a more radical direction, eschewing traditional narrative techniques and structures to create a form of ideologically driven film that proudly flouted basic standards of entertainment.Their 1981 documentary, “Too Early, Too Late,” for example, featured Ms. Huillet, in a voice-over, reading from a letter written by Friedrich Engels to the Marxist theorist Karl Kautsky about the economic despair of French peasants as seemingly unrelated footage of locations in contemporary France played onscreen.Mr. Straub with his wife and filmmaking partner, Danièle Huillet, in 2002. Their films, one critic wrote, “indifferent to love or admiration, are monuments to their own integrity.”Sipa/ShutterstockThe films’ source material often seemed plucked from a graduate-level syllabus, drawing from the likes of Bertolt Brecht, the novelist and literary critic Elio Vittorini and the operas of the atonal composer Arnold Schoenberg.Critics, film theorists and discerning viewers held strong views of their work, which could be seen as either poetic or tedious. Their minimalist approach to editing, cinematography and acting demanded that “one be in a mood so receptive that it borders on the brainwashed,” as Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times in his review of “Class Relations,” their 1984 interpretation of Franz Kafka’s unfinished novel, “Amerika.”The film is now hailed as one of the most accessible and beautiful of the Straub-Huillet films, but Mr. Canby said the actors’ impassive line delivery sounded “as if they were giving instructions on how to put on one’s life jacket in case of an unscheduled landing at sea.”To other critics, that steadfast commitment to an aesthetic was an artistic statement in itself. “Some movies want to be loved,” the critic J. Hoberman wrote in The New York Times reviewing a 45-film Straub-Huillet retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 2016. “Others prefer to be admired. And then there are the movies, like those by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, that, indifferent to love or admiration, are monuments to their own integrity.”Despite a body of work largely confined to art-house theaters and museum screenings, Mr. Straub was awarded the Leopard of Honor lifetime achievement award in 2017 by the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, an award that previously went to the likes of Bernardo Bertolucci, Werner Herzog and Mr. Godard. (Ms. Huillet died in 2006.) Richard Brody of The New Yorker wrote that Mr. Straub was “one of the least known of great filmmakers — he never had a hit or sought one.”If audiences shifted uncomfortably in their seats, so much the better. To the combative Mr. Straub, filmmaking could be a revolutionary act. “If we hadn’t learned how to make films,” he once said, “I would have planted bombs.”Mr. Straub in 2017 at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, where he received its Leopard of Honor lifetime achievement award, an honor previously bestowed on the likes of Bernardo Bertolucci, Werner Herzog and Jean-Luc Godard. Urs Flueeler/EPA, via ShutterstockJean-Marie Straub was born on Jan. 8,1933, in Metz, in northeastern France, and was a film buff from an early age, showing an affinity for the films of Jean Renoir, Robert Bresson and Jean Grémillon.He studied literature at the Lycée Fustel-de-Coulanges in Strasbourg, eventually earning his degree from University of Nancy. In the early 1950s, he organized a film club in Metz, to which he invited Mr. Truffaut, then a provocative critic for the seminal French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, and André Bazin, a Cahiers founder, to discuss films. (Mr. Straub began contributing to the magazine himself.)He met Ms. Huillet in 1954, and the couple settled in Paris, where Mr. Straub began his film career as an assistant, working on movies like Mr. Bresson’s “A Man Escaped,” released in 1956. Two years later, to avoid conscription in the Algerian War, he fled France for West Germany. He and Ms. Huillet were married in Munich in 1959, beginning a long career as expatriate filmmakers working largely in Germany, Italy and Switzerland.Their first short feature, “Not Reconciled” (1965), was adapted from a novel by Heinrich Böll, which dissects the growth and legacies of Nazism. The writer and public intellectual Susan Sontag later said the film had made her want to kiss the screen.In 1968, the couple won international acclaim for their first full-length feature, “The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach” (1968), which was a deconstructed version of a biopic of Johann Sebastian Bach.Set in locations in Germany where Bach had actually lived and worked, the film offers a sparse narrative consisting of voice-over reminiscences from a fictional diary by Bach’s second wife (the text was written by the filmmakers). Much of the action, as it were, is provided by musicians in period costume performing the composer’s great works.While the film baffled some critics in its day — A.H. Weiler deemed it “repetitious and static screen fare” in The Times — others, over time, came to see it as a masterpiece, a work of art “whose visual austerity, resolute slowness and refusal of conventional narrative were meant to advance a ruthless critique of capitalist aesthetics,” as A.O. Scott wrote in The Times in 2018.A scene from “The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach” (1968), which won international acclaim. It was Mr. Straub and Ms. Huillet’s first full-length feature film.Collection Christophel/AlamyAs their reputation grew, Mr. Straub and Ms. Huillet continued to push boundaries over the decades. Their films “From the Clouds to the Resistance” (1979) and “Sicilia!” (1999) both premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, a category reserved for artistically daring works.Critics were less kind to their 1979 adaptation of “Othon,” a 17th-century French play by Pierre Corneille, which announced its intentions to confound with a 22-word title in English: “Eyes Do Not Want to Close at All Times, or, Perhaps One Day Rome Will Allow Herself to Choose in Her Turn.”The film featured nonprofessional actors costumed as ancient Romans barking out the text of the play in an emotionally flat, rapid-fire fashion from the ruins of Palatine Hill in contemporary Rome, with the din of the modern city humming below.Ever the utopian, Mr. Straub said he considered the target audience of “Othon” — about a Roman nobleman’s political ambitions amid calls for bringing power to the people — to be the modern proletariat.“I would like to have ‘Othon’ seen by workers in Paris,” he was quoted as saying in a 1975 interview. “They’ve never been told that Corneille is impossible to understand.”The film, he added, “threatens not just a class, but a clique of power.”That clique of power apparently included critics at the New York Film Festival in 1970, half of whom bolted for the exit during the film’s press screening.But perhaps that was the point. As Mr. Straub once put it, “We make our films so that audiences can walk out of them.” More

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      Angelina Jolie Details Abuse Allegations Against Brad Pitt in Countersuit

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      In court papers related to a legal battle over a French winery they once owned together, she claims that he was abusive to her and their children during a 2016 plane ride.Angelina Jolie filed a cross complaint against her ex-husband Brad Pitt on Tuesday, disclosing new details about what she described in court papers as abusive behavior by him on a private plane in 2016 that led to the dissolution of their marriage.In a court filing in Los Angeles, filed as part of a legal battle over a winery the prominent Hollywood actors once owned together, lawyers for Ms. Jolie stated that negotiations to sell her share of the business to Mr. Pitt had broken down over his demand that she sign “a nondisclosure agreement that would have contractually prohibited her from speaking outside of court about Pitt’s physical and emotional abuse of her and their children.”Her filing goes on to describe an extended physical and verbal outburst in September 2016 as Mr. Pitt, Ms. Jolie and their six children flew from France to California. “Pitt choked one of the children and struck another in the face” and “grabbed Jolie by the head and shook her,” the filing states, adding that at one point “he poured beer on Jolie; at another, he poured beer and red wine on the children.” Federal authorities, who have jurisdiction over flights, investigated the incident but declined to bring criminal charges. Days after the plane trip, Ms. Jolie filed for divorce.Lawyers for Mr. Pitt did not immediately return several phone calls and emails seeking his response on Tuesday. In 2016, unnamed people close to Mr. Pitt were quoted in various publications saying that he had not been abusive toward his children.The decoupling of Ms. Jolie and Mr. Pitt has stretched on for years, drawn out by a court battle for custody of their children and, more recently, a lawsuit instigated by Mr. Pitt over the French winery, Château Miraval, that the couple bought more than a decade ago. Mr. Pitt’s lawsuit, filed this year, accused his ex-wife of violating his “contractual rights” when she sold her half of the company to a subsidiary of Stoli Group without his approval.Ms. Jolie’s cross complaint said she only sold her stake elsewhere after talks broke down over his demand for a nondisclosure agreement. Her filing states that the F.B.I. agent who investigated allegations that Mr. Pitt physically assaulted Ms. Jolie and their children on the plane in 2016 had “concluded that the government had probable cause to charge Pitt with a federal crime for his conduct that day.”The Château Miraval property, which is near Brignoles, in the south of France, in 2008.Lionel Cironneau/Associated PressA redacted F.B.I. report on the case, which was reported on by several news outlets in August and later obtained by The New York Times, states that the agent provided the United States Attorney’s Office “copies of a probable cause statement related to this incident.”“After reviewing the document, representative of the United States Attorney’s Office discussed the merits of this investigation with the case agent,” the report said. “It was agreed by all parties that criminal charges in this case would not be pursued due to several factors.”The F.B.I. report described Ms. Jolie as “conflicted on whether or not to be supportive of charges” related to the case.Representatives from the F.B.I. and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles declined to comment.“She has gone to great lengths to try to shield their children from reliving the pain Pitt inflicted on the family that day,” Ms. Jolie’s lawyers wrote in the cross complaint. “But when Pitt filed this lawsuit seeking to reassert control over Jolie’s financial life and compel her to rejoin her ex-husband as a frozen-out business partner, Pitt forced Jolie to publicly defend herself on these issues for the first time.”According to Ms. Jolie’s account of the 2016 flight in the court papers, the dispute began when Mr. Pitt accused Ms. Jolie of being “too deferential” to their children and then began yelling at her in the bathroom. “Pitt grabbed Jolie by the head and shook her, and then grabbed her shoulders and shook her again before pushing her into the bathroom wall,” the filing states. “Pitt then punched the ceiling of the plane numerous times, prompting Jolie to leave the bathroom.”When one of the children came to Ms. Jolie’s defense, the court papers said, Mr. Pitt lunged at the child, prompting her to grab him from behind. Amid the altercation, Mr. Pitt “choked one of the children and struck another in the face,” the suit said.The 2016 flight has been the subject of news media reports since shortly after it occurred. In November of that year, the F.B.I. released a statement saying that it had closed its investigation into the flight and that no charges had been filed.Puck News reported this August that Ms. Jolie had been seeking information about the F.B.I.’s case as an anonymous plaintiff in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, with the publication including details of the report.It is unclear whether the heavily redacted F.B.I. report included allegations that Mr. Pitt had choked or struck any of the children.Ms. Jolie and Mr. Pitt met each other on the set of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” a 2005 action movie in which they played married assassins. In 2008, they purchased a controlling interest in Château Miraval, viewing it as both a family home and business; several years later, the couple was married on the property.Ms. Jolie and Mr. Pitt have six children, now between the ages of 14 and 21.The French winery, known for its rosé, is at the center of a legal dispute between the divorced couple.In February, Mr. Pitt sued Ms. Jolie and her former company, alleging that she violated his “contractual expectations” when she sold her interest in the wine company to Tenute del Mondo, a subsidiary of Stoli Group. According to his lawsuit, the former couple had an understanding that neither party would sell its share of the winery without the consent of the other.“Jolie pursued and then consummated the purported sale in secret, purposely keeping Pitt in the dark, and knowingly violating Pitt’s contractual rights,” his lawsuit alleged.Last month, Ms. Jolie’s former company, which is now owned by Stoli Group, countersued Mr. Pitt, rebutting his version of events and his claim that the sale constituted a “hostile takeover.”In Ms. Jolie’s own countersuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday, she said that she opted to sell her share of the wine business, in part, because she was growing uncomfortable with participating in an alcohol-related business, considering Mr. Pitt’s “acknowledged problem of alcohol abuse.” Mr. Pitt told The Times in 2019 that after Ms. Jolie filed for divorce, he spent time in Alcoholics Anonymous and was committed to sobriety.Her filing said there was no written or verbal understanding like the one Mr. Pitt described, claiming that Mr. Pitt had, in fact, rejected the idea that there needed to be a plan in case the relationship ended.In their lawsuits, Mr. Pitt and Ms. Jolie shared divergent accounts of how negotiations around him buying her portion of the wine company fell apart.Mr. Pitt’s lawsuit asserted that Ms. Jolie pulled out of the tentative deal last year after a judge overseeing the custody dispute issued a ruling against her, prompting her to turn to Stoli Group.Ms. Jolie’s countersuit claimed, however, that Mr. Pitt had been the one to pull out of the deal after she declined to agree to his nondisparagement clause, forcing her to turn to another buyer. 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      Jean-Louis Trintignant, Star of Celebrated European Films, Dies at 91

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      For 50 years, in movies like “A Man and a Woman” and “My Night at Maud’s,” his specialty was playing the flawed Everyman.Jean-Louis Trintignant, a leading French actor of subtle power who appeared in some of the most celebrated European films of the last 50 years, among them Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Conformist,” Eric Rohmer’s “My Night at Maud’s” and Claude Lelouch’s “A Man and a Woman,” died on Friday at his home in southern France. He was 91.His wife, Marianne Hoepfner Trintignant, confirmed the death to Agence France-Presse. Mr. Trintignant had announced in 2018 that he had prostate cancer and was retiring.Mr. Trintignant seemed to specialize in playing the flawed Everyman and revealing his characters’ depths slowly.“Jean-Louis Trintignant has been, for better than half a century, one of the great stealth actors of the movies,” the critic Terrence Rafferty wrote in The New York Times in 2012. “He knows how to catch an audience unaware.”The occasion was the release that year of Michael Haneke’s “Amour,” which went on to win the 2013 Academy Award for best foreign-language film. In a starring role for the first time in the millennium, Mr. Trintignant, by then nearly blind, portrayed a frail old man caring for his dying wife, played by Emmanuelle Riva — “two titans of French cinema,” Manohla Dargis wrote in The Times — in a film that is both a love story and a stark examination of illness and mortality.It was the capstone to a rich career playing a gallery of characters who were rarely glamorous. Mr. Trintignant was an emotionally fragile Fascist in “The Conformist” (1970); a timid, meticulous graduate student who accidentally falls in with a ribald bon vivant in Dino Risi’s 1962 “Il Sorpasso” (“The Easy Life”); and a repressed Roman Catholic from the provinces who resists the seductive advances of a beautiful divorced woman in “My Night at Maud’s” (1969).“If some people laugh because I did not have sex with Maud, well, I would prefer being thought ridiculous to being thought a hero,” Mr. Trintignant said in a 1970 interview with The Times. “Even kissing scenes bore me.”In 1969 he won the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance as a magistrate investigating the assassination of a Greek politician in Costa-Gavras’s political thriller “Z,” which also won the foreign-language Oscar that year.For American audiences, Mr. Trintignant did not fit the conventional images of French film stars, like the wisecracking Jean-Paul Belmondo, the working-class hero Jean Gabin or the suave sophisticate Maurice Chevalier. He was more understated.“The best actors in the world,” he once said, “are those who feel the most and show the least.”Jean-Louis Xavier Trintignant was born on Dec. 11, 1930, in Piolenc, a small town in southeastern France, where his father, Raoul, was a wealthy industrialist and local politician. Jean-Louis seriously considered becoming a racecar driver like his uncle Maurice Trintignant, a top competitor in the 1950s and ’60s who was only 13 years older than Jean-Louis. (Another uncle, Louis Trintignant, also raced and was killed in 1933 when his car crashed.)Jean-Louis took up law studies instead, thinking he would follow his father into politics. But while a law student in Aix-en-Provence he attended a performance of “The Miser” by Molière and was so smitten that he decided on a stage career.Mr. Trintignant moved to Paris to study acting and began appearing in theater productions at 20. After touring France in the early 1950s, he was hailed as one of the country’s most gifted young stage actors and was soon offered film contracts.Mr. Trintignant with Brigitte Bardot in “And God Created Woman” (1956), directed by Roger Vadim, Ms. Bardot’s husband at the time.Kingsley InternationalIn Roger Vadim’s 1956 movie “And God Created Woman,” Mr. Trintignant starred as a young, naïve husband who is in love with his diabolically flirtatious wife, played by Brigitte Bardot (Mr. Vadim’s wife at the time) in what was considered her breakout sex-kitten role. Whether true or not, rumors circulated that she and Mr. Trintignant had a real-life affair during the filming. Ms. Bardot’s marriage to Mr. Vadim ended in 1957.Mr. Vadim nonetheless cast Mr. Trintignant in the 1959 film “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” adapted from a sexually scandalous 18th-century novel about a scheming noblewoman. Mr. Trintignant had the lesser but romantic role of the charming Chevalier Danceny, a music teacher for French nobility.The Académie Française, the official arbiter of French culture, denounced the film as “desecrating a classic,” and it was condemned as salacious from Roman Catholic pulpits on both sides of the Atlantic.Mr. Trintignant shared top billing with Vittorio Gassman in “Il Sorpasso,” which is widely considered Mr. Risi’s masterpiece. He played a shy law student who is enticed by Mr. Gassman’s libidinous extrovert and embarks on a rollicking car journey through the Italian countryside that ends tragically.Still more memorable was Mr. Trintignant’s performance eight years laterin “The Conformist.” Based on a novel of the same title by Alberto Moravia, the film is a chilling psychological portrait of a secret policeman in Fascist Italy. Mr. Trintignant, in the lead role, arranges the assassination of his old friend, a left-wing university professor, whose young wife he covets.Mr. Trintignant assumed his most romantic role, as a racecar driver, in “A Man and a Woman” (1966). The movie was an international hit, generating more box-office receipts than any previous French film. He said his early passion for racing — and an intimate knowledge of the sport conveyed to him by his uncles — had made his performance especially credible.But he professed that he was uncomfortable in the movie’s explicit love scenes, in which his co-star was Anouk Aimée, a longtime friend of his wife at the time, the director Nadine Trintignant.“It was embarrassing to find myself in bed with a woman that way,” he told The Times in 1970. “I had known Anouk for 10 years, and she was Nadine’s best friend, and the whole crew was watching.” The movie’s best scenes, Mr. Trintignant insisted, were his hairpin racing turns in Monte Carlo.He went on to appear in an average of three films a year for the next three decades, more often as a supporting actor than as the lead.Mr. Trintignant in “Amour” (2012), which won the Oscar for best foreign-language film. By then nearly blind, he portrayed a frail old man caring for his dying wife, played by Emmanuelle Riva.Sony Pictures ClassicsAn exception was the acclaimed 1994 film “Red,” the finale of the Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Three Colors” trilogy. In a work that tracks the parallel lives of a group of people living outside Geneva, Mr. Trintignant played a cold retired judge who spied on his neighbors using high-tech surveillance equipment.He also continued to act onstage occasionally.Later in life Mr. Trintignant returned to his early passion for sports-car racing, participating in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1980 and the Monte Carlo Rally in 1984. In the ’90s he spent much of his time tending a vineyard he operated in the South of France or acting in theater. His return to film in “Amour” came after an absence of more than a decade.Mr. Trintignant’s first marriage, to the actress Stéphane Audran, ended in divorce. He married Nadine Marquand, then an actress, in 1960 and had three children with her: Vincent, now a director; Pauline, who died in infancy; and Marie, a successful actress (she had acted alongside her father at age 4 in “Mon Amour, Mon Amour,” which was directed by her mother) and the mother of four who at 41 was beaten to death in her hotel room in Vilnius, Lithuania, in the summer of 2003 while filming there.The murder was a sensation in the European press. Ms. Trintignant’s 39-year-old boyfriend, Bertrand Cantat, one of France’s biggest rock stars, later admitted in a Lithuanian court that he had beaten her in a jealous rage over her plans to vacation with an ex-husband.He was convicted of manslaughter in 2004 and released on parole in 2007, angering the Trintignant family and its supporters.After Marie’s death, Mr. Trintignant fell into a severe depression.“For three months I didn’t speak,” he told the Montreal newspaper The Gazette in 2012. “After that I realized I had to either stop living, commit suicide or continue to live.”In 2011 he withdrew from a planned one-man show at the summer Avignon Festival in France when he learned that Mr. Cantat was to appear at the festival as well in an acting role onstage.Mr. Trintignant’s marriage to Nadine Trintignant ended in divorce in 1976. He married Marianne Hoepfner, a racecar driver, in 2000. Information on other survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Trintignant’s eyesight deteriorated in his later years, but he was accepting of his condition. “We weren’t meant to live more than 80 years,” he told The Gazette. “It’s not so bad as all that. I’m still happy when I’m alone. I have an inner life.”Even at the height of his popularity, Mr. Trintignant insisted that acting was always a struggle.“I am not a born actor,” he said in the 1970 Times interview. “Even today, I am not an instinctive actor. I prepare meticulously, and it is only when I am before the camera that I become completely free.” More

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      in Television

      A French Hit on Netflix Changes Its Language and Streaming Service

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      “Call My Agent!,” set at a Parisian talent agency, was a cult favorite during the pandemic. But the English-language adaptation will be on Sundance Now and AMC+.Four bumbling talent agents at risk of losing their business because of poor financial planning. A secret daughter interested in a career in the entertainment industry. Cameos by famous actors playing themselves. One spoiled dog. This is the formula that made the French show “Call My Agent!,” about a Parisian talent agency, into a global hit once it began appearing on Netflix in 2016.On Friday, the British version of the show, titled “Ten Percent” and set at a London talent agency, will debut. But instead of airing on Netflix, the eight-episode series will premiere on Sundance Now and AMC+ in the United States, and Amazon U.K. in Britain, Canada and six other English-speaking territories.Basing an English-language TV show on a popular hit from another country is a tried-and-true convention in the U.S. entertainment industry. Think “Homeland” and “Euphoria” — or even “The Office,” which began life with Ricky Gervais in England before being adapted into the long-running American version starring Steve Carell.“Ten Percent” was conceived in much the same way. David Davoli, who heads the television division for Bron Studios, negotiated, along with London’s Headline Pictures, for the English rights to “Call My Agent!” in 2017, after the show debuted on Netflix but before it truly caught on with English-speaking audiences. According to Mr. Davoli, it was already doing “bonkers numbers on French television,” where it debuted in 2015. Yet it was before “the dawn of international television where people were more comfortable ingesting foreign language stuff,” he said.What makes “Ten Percent” unique is that usually the English-language version is adapted from a show not widely seen in the United States. Not so with “Call My Agent!,” which became a cult favorite with American audiences during the pandemic. The show has run for four seasons on Netflix — with talk of a possible fifth to come — and inspired a film and adaptations in India and Turkey. Its star, Camille Cottin, could be seen in the films “House of Gucci” and “Stillwater” last year.“Call My Agent!” became available on Netflix in 2016.Christophe Brachet/NetflixNetflix won’t give details on the show’s viewership numbers, but the company’s co-chief executive Ted Sarandos referred to the series in his January earnings call as proof that Netflix’s investment in international programming was paying off. It, along with “Money Heist” and “Squid Game,” proved to streaming companies that if a show is good enough, subtitles and cultural specificity are not a deterrent for viewers. And if that’s the case, why spend money on an English-language version? The Race to Rule Streaming TVA New Era: Companies like Netflix, HBO, Hulu and Amazon ushered out the age of “prestige TV” and ushered in an age of anything goes.Netflix’s Woes: The streaming star lost subscribers for the first time in a decade as competitors are continuing to expand.A Warning Sign?: Netflix’s sudden problems may be an indication that other streaming services are heading toward an unstable future.Commercials: Streaming executives are having a change of heart about ads and offering lower-priced versions in exchange for commercials.In contrast, “Ten Percent” will appear on a much smaller platform, one with nine million subscribers, just 12 percent of Netflix’s 74.6 million subscribers in the United States and Canada. (It stars Jack Davenport as the de facto head of the agency and will feature cameos from well-known British actors including Helena Bonham Carter, Dominic West and David Oyelowo.)Netflix had the opportunity to buy “Ten Percent,” as did every other streaming service in the United States, but passed. It declined to comment on its decision. Instead, Sundance Now came up with an attractive offer and licensed the show.“We’re very happy to be there,” Mr. Davoli said of his relationship with AMC Networks, which owns Sundance Now. “I like being a bigger fish in a smaller pond. I think we’re going to get way more attention there. Marketing is half the battle, and on some of the bigger streamers they’re up on Friday and gone on Monday.”AMC Networks, which owns a handful of niche streaming options including AMC+, Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now and AllBlk, will also air the show weekly on its BBC America channel, two days after the episodes become available through streaming.“We jumped at the chance to make Sundance Now the U.S. home of the British remake,” said Shannon Cooper, vice president of programming for Sundance Now. “This is such a fun watch, whether you’ve seen the original or not.”This is a rocky moment for streaming, with Netflix’s stock plummeting after last week’s announcement that it lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of the year and expected to lose two million beyond that in the second. Despite the deluge of content arriving weekly on the various services, consumers are happy to end a subscription if the latest offerings aren’t striking their fancy.Helena Bonham Carter, right, is one of the celebrities playing a version of themselves in “Ten Percent.” Lydia Leonard is one of the show’s stars.Rob Youngson/Sundance NowAccording to a recent survey by Deloitte, 37 percent of consumers in the United States added or canceled a streaming subscription in the last six months, a churn figure that has been consistent since 2020. The primary reasons they cited were price concerns and lack of new content. The return of a favorite show, according to Deloitte’s survey, is a key reason customers would subscribe to a service, or resubscribe to one they recently abandoned. That’s why a show like “Ten Percent,” which has the potential to lure viewers who enjoyed “Call My Agent!,” is an attractive purchase for an upstart streaming service.“It’s an appealing proposition for any of these distributors,” said Dan Erlij, partner at United Talent Agency and co-head of the television literary department. “There’s so much stuff that’s constantly premiering. How do you make sure that people are aware of it? Bus ads and billboards only take you so far. And it’s expensive. So if you know that there’s a word of mouth built in already, I think that can be really helpful.”The executive producer of “Ten Percent” is John Morton, best known for his comedy “W1A,” which satirizes the BBC. In a recent interview, he said he was cognizant of the high stakes he was facing when he took the job of adapting the beloved series. Attracted to the show’s “warm heart” and its ability to connect its audience to its fallible main characters, Mr. Morton said, he was intimidated by the idea of “starting again with something that’s already so good.”His strategy was to go back and rewatch the first season of “Call My Agent!” in its entirety but then never refer to it again. As of the interview, he had yet to finish the third season and hadn’t watched the fourth.The ultimate goal was to take the essence of “Call My Agent!” and make it specifically British, capturing the diversity of London, from its architecture to its people.“London is chaotic — architecturally, logistically, creatively — and that throws up wonderful things and also terrible things,” Mr. Morton said, adding that, as in “Call My Agent!,” the talent agency has a rooftop. But rather than looking out over a pristine Parisian night sky, this roof “looks out over a certain sort of unconnected chimneys.”The cast of the British version is also more diverse, with the secret daughter from the original now played by the British actress Hiftu Quasem, who is of Bengali descent, and the bumbling agent, Dan, portrayed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, a British actor of Sri Lankan descent. Yet the archetypes from the original prevail. For example, Ms. Cottin’s character, a hard-charging lesbian agent, is now played by Lydia Leonard, and her character’s frenetic love life is also complicated by her career ambitions.Mr. Davoli — who since becoming the head of Bron TV has sold three other co-productions to streaming companies, including “The Defeated” to Netflix and “Kin” to AMC — admits that the market for format deals has become more challenged in recent years.“The thing that’s most important that I’ve learned over the last four years is the quality bar cannot be messed with,” he said. “The only way to protect the investment is to ensure that you’re creatively making content that can sell into the U.S., because our audiences are so sophisticated now. They won’t stick around for stuff that’s not rising above a certain bar.” More

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      in Theater

      Younger Than It Looks, but No More Diverse: France’s Top Theater Prize

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      At the Molières, France’s equivalent of the Tony Awards, commercial and publicly funded productions seem to inhabit different worlds.PARIS — Four hundred years after his birth, the playwright Molière is being feted in France this year, and the theater awards that bear his name couldn’t pass up the chance to participate. The Molières, France’s equivalent of the Tony Awards, have jokingly renamed their yearly bash — set for May 30 — the 400th ceremony.Yet in truth, the Molières are a spring chicken compared with similar theater awards around the world. They were founded only in 1987, four decades after the Tonys; their initiator was the producer Georges Cravenne, who had already created the Césars, the French film awards, in 1976.And their history has been anything but smooth. The Molières were designed to bridge the gap between two opposing production models: publicly funded stagings on the one hand and private ventures on the other. The distinction has long structured French theater and shaped its aesthetics. “Public theater,” which is largely funded by the culture ministry and local authorities, prides itself on presenting more experimental, cerebral fare than privately owned venues.Ahead of the 2012 ceremony, however, representatives of over two dozen commercial venues walked out of the Molières, arguing that the ceremony favored the publicly funded sector and didn’t sufficiently account for their popularity with audiences. It returned only in 2014, under new leadership.This year’s nominations suggest the balance remains precarious. There are separate prizes for public and privately funded productions in several of the top categories, including best production and the acting awards, with different criteria. To be eligible, private-sector shows must have been performed at least 60 times between January 2020 and March 2022, whereas half that number of performances is enough for public-sector nominees. The winners are then voted on by members of the Molières’ Academy, whose names aren’t public.The outcome of this process can be puzzling. It rarely reflects critical consensus, perhaps because many well-reviewed productions don’t even qualify for consideration, and it favors star-led shows. The acting categories, especially, are dominated by acting veterans and celebrities like the singer Vanessa Paradis, who this year earned a best private-sector actress nomination for her stage debut, in “Maman” by Samuel Benchetrit.The Molières also appear utterly unconcerned about their lack of diversity. As early as 2016, the French collective “Decolonizing the Arts” pointed out that there wasn’t a single person of color among the acting nominees. Two years later, the Black author and director Gerty Dambury publicly called for a “non-racist Molières ceremony.” The message has fallen on deaf ears: This year, the acting and directing categories are almost uniformly white again, with the exception of one performer of Algerian descent, Kamel Isker.Jordi Le Bolloc’h as Jack Mancini and Anne-Sophie Picard as Élisa in “The Race of Giants” at the Théâtre des Béliers Parisiens.Alejandro GuerreroIf you are in the market for a white-savior narrative, on the other hand, the Molières have some options. One of the top shows in the private-sector categories this year is “Lawrence of Arabia,” playing at the Théâtre du Gymnase Marie-Bell through May 22. Like the 1962 film of the same name, it was inspired by the life of the British archaeologist and colonial administrator T.E. Lawrence, who played a role in the Arab Revolt throughout the Ottoman Empire during World War I. (The film isn’t mentioned in the show’s credits, despite obvious parallels.)Eric Bouvron and Benjamin Penamaria have crafted a zippy, low-tech stage biography, whose central highlight is live music, with two musicians and a singer onstage throughout. The artistic team clearly came to this story with good intentions. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, a secret 1916 treaty that outlined how the Ottoman lands would be divided between France and the United Kingdom, is explained and denounced. As in the film, Lawrence is made aware of the plan late, and disagrees with it.Yet this “Lawrence of Arabia” doesn’t engage with the problems involved in representing Arab history and culture through the eyes of a British colonial-era hero. While the show includes some dialogue in Arabic, the frequent use of “Allahu akbar” as a war cry plays into Muslim caricatures, and a faux-“Oriental” dance is a low point.As the central character, Lawrence is depicted as a master strategist, without whom Arab leaders wouldn’t have accomplished much. Lawrence’s close Arab friend, Daoum, speaks in cringeworthy pidgin French that highlights his lack of education and manners, and follows Lawrence like an over-excited puppy.It is difficult to understand why anyone would want to reaffirm these dated perspectives today, but “Lawrence of Arabia” is in many ways typical of the production style favored in France’s private sector. Its storytelling is relentlessly upbeat and fast-paced, with regular visual jokes and puns; the characters are brightly captured, yet often one-dimensional.The main goal, clearly, is entertainment, and two of the other nominees for best private-sector production are made of the same cloth: “The Race of Giants,” written and directed by Mélody Mourey, and Léna Bréban’s production of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”At the Théâtre des Béliers Parisiens, “The Race of Giants” (through May 29) dives into the 20th-century space race, efficiently weaving together history and fiction. Mourey invents a brilliant yet troubled astronaut, Jack Mancini, who makes it to NASA in the 1960s — only to be betrayed by a secret Soviet agent. The production makes inventive use of video and very few props, which allows for fast transitions and jumps back and forth in time.Jordi Le Bolloc’h makes for an energetic loose cannon as Mancini, but as in “Lawrence of Arabia,” the female characters — ditsy wives and flirty, drunken bar visitors, mainly — take a back seat to the lives of men, with the exception of Jack’s headstrong wife, Élisa.Barbara Schultz, left, as Rosalind and Ariane Mourier as Celia in “As You Like It” at the Théâtre de la Pépinière.François FontyFor feel-good comedy, “As You Like It,” at the Théâtre de la Pépinière through April 30, remains the best ticket in town. Bréban, who staged the first post-lockdown show in France — at a retirement home — in 2020, has been going from strength to strength recently. This winter, she briskly led members of the Comédie-Française in an adaptation of Hector Malot’s 1878 novel, “Sans Famille.”“As You Like It” is rarely performed in France, in part because its brand of pastoral fantasy isn’t easy to transpose, but the translator Pierre-Alain Leleu has provided this production with a brilliantly witty French rendition. Bréban, for her part, has a gift for instilling an exhilarating sense of collective rhythm in her actors. There isn’t a dull moment in her Forest of Arden; the relationship between the cousins Rosalind (Barbara Schulz) and Celia (Ariane Mourier) is especially loving and zany.“As You Like It” is nominated in several private-sector categories, but Bréban’s career shows that the distinction between private and publicly funded theater isn’t as clear-cut as it was in the past. Her ability to go from the Comédie-Française, a prestigious public institution, to the smaller Théâtre de la Pépinière with the same level of success suggests that the audiences for each are not so different. The Molières may not have found a happy medium yet, but some of its nominees are leading the way.Lawrence d’Arabie. Directed by Éric Bouvron. Théâtre du Gymnase Marie-Bell, through May 22.La Course Des Géants. Directed by Mélody Mourey. Théâtre des Béliers Parisiens, through May 29.Comme Il Vous Plaira. Directed by Léna Bréban. Théâtre de la Pépinière, through April 30. More

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      in Movies

      Michel Bouquet, Award-Winning French Actor, Dies at 96

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      One of his country’s great theater actors, he went on to appear in over 100 films during a decades-long career.Michel Bouquet, a French actor whose talent for suggesting passion and turmoil beneath a bland, middle-class facade made him a favorite of New Wave directors, has died. He was 96.The Élysée Palace, the office of the French president, on Wednesday announced Mr. Bouquet’s death. The news release did not give a cause of death. Mr. Bouquet, one of France’s great theater actors, found a special niche in film in the late 1960s and ’70s playing ordinary Frenchmen, somber and reserved, with complicated inner lives and deep reserves of emotion, a contrast heightened by his impassive, guileless face.He played the lethally jealous husband in Claude Chabrol’s “Unfaithful Wife” (1969) and the advertising executive leading a double life in that director’s “Just Before Nightfall” (1971). He was also one of Jeanne Moreau’s hapless victims in the François Truffaut film “The Bride Wore Black” (1968).An actor of considerable range, Mr. Bouquet was equally at home in comedy and drama, and both in sympathetic and unsympathetic roles, like the unsavory detective Comolli in Mr. Truffaut’s 1969 film “Mississippi Mermaid.”Mr. Bouquet appeared in more than 100 films, and won a new generation of admirers with his performance in 1991 as the older incarnation of the title character in “Toto the Hero.” His two best actor Césars, the French equivalent of the Oscar, came when he was in his 70s. The first was for his understatedly menacing performance in “How I Killed My Father” (2001), as a feckless parent who sows emotional chaos when he re-enters his sons’ lives.“He’s a greatly original actor,” Anne Fontaine, the director of “How I Killed My Father,” said of Mr. Bouquet in an interview with The New York Times in 2002, noting that she had written the role with him in mind. “Even if he has a very relaxed and smiling air, there’s something in his acting that’s disconcerting, destabilizing, that provokes strangeness all the time.” He sometimes described himself as “a calm anarchist.”Mr. Bouquet won a second César for his tour de force as François Mitterrand, the ailing French president, in “The Last Mitterrand” (2005).“Charming, arrogant, childlike and teasing in turn, Bouquet offers up a master class in understated character acting, and delivers an indelible interpretation of a complex, infuriating man,” The Daily Telegraph of London wrote of that performance.Michel Francois Pierre Bouquet was born on Nov. 6, 1925, in Paris, to Georges and Marie (Monot) Bouquet. His mother was a milliner. His father was an officer in the French Army who was taken prisoner by the Nazis soon after the invasion of France. To help support the family, Michel worked as an apprentice to a pastry maker and as a bank clerk.Encouraged by the actor Maurice Escande, he began studying at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Paris and, after appearing in a production of Albert Camus’s “Caligula,” took his first major role in Jean Anouilh’s “Roméo et Jeannette.”He went on to build a distinguished theatrical career, in which he was known especially for his work in plays by Molière, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Eugène Ionesco and Thomas Bernhard.“This is a very lonely job, just like painting,” he told the French newspaper Sud Ouest in 2011. “One does it in public, but the essence of it is secret.”He made his first film appearances in 1947, as an assassin in “Criminal Brigade” and as a consumptive in “Monsieur Vincent,” a biography of St. Vincent de Paul. Two years later, he offered a hint of things to come in “Pattes Blanches,” based on a play by Mr. Anouilh, in which he portrayed a beaten-down aristocrat hopelessly infatuated with the young girlfriend of the local innkeeper.He later provided the narrator’s voice in Alain Resnais’s landmark Holocaust documentary “Night and Fog” (1956).In 1965, he made the first of his half-dozen films with Mr. Chabrol, the campy secret agent film “The Tiger Smells Like Dynamite,” which was followed by his signature performances in “The Unfaithful Wife” and “Just Before Nightfall.”Mr. Bouquet’s talents were ideally suited to Mr. Chabrol’s chilling explorations of love, violence and moral ambiguity. As Charles Desvallées, the jealous husband in “The Unfaithful Wife,” he seethed, schemed, suffered and eventually dispatched the lover of his wife, played by Stéphane Audran.Mr. Bouquet’s marriage to Ariane Borg, an actress, ended in divorce. She died in 2007. In 1970, he married Juliette Carré, who survives him, according to the Élysée news release. Ms. Carré, also an actress, often appeared alongside Mr. Bouquet onstage.Mr. Bouquet (who was unrelated to the actress Carole Bouquet) continued to act well into his later years, appearing in Molière’s “Hypochondriac” on the stage in 2008, and in the films “La Petite Chambre” in 2010 (released as “The Little Bedroom” in U.S. theaters in 2014) and “The Origin of Violence” in 2016. In 2014, he was nominated for another best actor César for his performance as the title character in “Renoir.” More