Trintignant puts poetry to music
AT 81 AND NEAR-BLIND, the icon of French cinema prepares to take the stage at the Festival international de la littérature
“I’m still happy when I’m alone. I have an inner life.” JEAN-LOUIS TRINTIGNANT
Jean-Louis Trintignant, at 81, is almost completely blind. He can no longer read his favourite poets. But he is still capable of performing the works of Jacques Prévert, Boris Vian and Robert Desnos, as their words are indelibly burned in his memory. And this icon of French cinema has just won the Best Actor Palme d’Or (his second) at Cannes for his latest film, Amour. (The last one was for Z in 1969.)
Trintignant’s eyesight had been deteriorating for several years. He’s taking the loss philosophically. “We weren’t meant to live more than 80 years,” he observed, in French. “It’s not so bad as all that. I’m still happy when I’m alone. I have an inner life.”
We spoke by phone Tuesday, while Trintignant was still in France. Now he is in Montreal and will be on stage Sunday for the first of three performances of his poetry-set-tomusic show, Trois poètes libertaires du XXe siècle: Vian, Prévert, Desnos, presented at Théâtre Outremont, as part of the Festival international de la littérature.
The FIL engagement was to begin Monday night, but tickets disappeared so quickly that an additional performance, at 8 p.m. Sunday, was announced last week.
The 18th edition of FIL, a literary festival with a broad mandate, begins Friday and continues until Sept. 29. Other headliners include author Nancy Huston and singing poets/composers Thomas Hellman and Tristan Malavoy.
Trintignant, best known for classics like Un home et une femme (1966), Ma nuit chez Maud (1969) and Le Conformiste (1970), has just made a triumphant return to the screen, after more than a decade away. He won the 2012 Best Actor Palme d’Or award for the Michael Haneke film, costarring Emmanuelle Riva. This touching tale of a man whose wife suffers a stroke and sinks into dementia also stirred up Oscar buzz at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) last week.
Trintignant, who did not attend the Toronto festival, was pleased to hear the film was well-received. But his retirement from the world of cinema, after 130 films, still stands. “I made a film,” he said, “because I liked the director a lot. I wanted to work with him. But I won’t make another film.”
Since 1998, Trintignant has concentrated on performing staged literature. (Not unlike Christopher Plummer, who, at 82, performed his literary collage, A Word or Two, at the Stratford Festival this season, having won a 2012 Best Supporting Actor Oscar last February for Beginners.)
“I know of him, but we have never met,” Trintignant said of Plummer. Both of them played Hamlet, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, in 1957. “I played a lot of Shakespeare,” Trintignant recalled, “But the rest was smaller roles. I love Shakespeare.” He estimated that he has performed in about 80 theatrical productions.
Why is live performance so important to Trintignant? “Because I enjoy it,” he replied, “I like the direct contact, the rapport with the public.”
As for his choice of poets Prévert, Vian and Desnos, Trintignant said he is fond of them because they were anarchists. He was attracted to their political ideas and sense of humour, he said, as well as their writing style.
This is his fourth literary show and fourth visit to the FIL literary festival. His first staged reading, La Valse des adieux d’Aragon, played here in 2000. In 2006, he returned with Apollinaire (2006), and again in 2007 with Journal de Jules Renard.
Why does he keep returning to Montreal? He’s fond of FIL director Michelle Corbeil, for one thing, he said. She does keep asking him back. The city itself is another attraction, as well as the people who attend his shows. “They really are the best audiences I’ve ever known,” he said.
Trintignant isn’t alone on stage for Trois poètes libertaires. Two musicians, Daniel Mille on accordion and Gregoire Korniluk on cello, perform mostly original (with a dash of Bach) music composed for the show. It has been performed, on tour, about 50 times.
One place it did not play was the Avignon Festival last year. Trintignant withdrew from the festival after learning that Wajdi Mouawad’s Des Femmes, with music composed and performed by rocker Bertrand Cantat, was also going to be on the program. Trintignant didn’t want to be anywhere near Cantat, whom he refers to, in seething tones, as “my daughter’s murderer”
Marie Trintignant died in 2003, at the age of 41, as the result of a severe beating from Cantat, who was her partner at the time. He was convicted of manslaughter, sentenced to eight years and served four. Des Femmes stirred up a controversy in Canada, too, but it died down after Cantat was barred from entering the country. Trintignant is grateful for the sympathy he received at the time from many Canadians.
After Marie’s death, her father went into a severe depression. “For three months I didn’t speak,” he recalled.
“After that I realized I had to either stop living, commit suicide or continue to live.”
He chose the latter. Theatre and poetry have been part of his healing process. “Poetry is important because it’s the most beautiful literary form, and poets are people who are often ahead of their time. Poetry is politically important, too.”
Festival international de la littérature begins Friday and continues through Sept. 29. Trois poètes libertaires du XXe Siècle: Vian, Prévert, Desnos, starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, plays Sunday through Tuesday, 8 p.m. at Théâtre Outremont. For information, visit www. festival-fil.qc.ca or call 514284-4545. Tickets: www. lavitrine.com.