The photo is 44 years old and dates from February 1, 1980. It is in black and white and shows a mother playing with her children in a Parisian park. This woman is Nadine Trintignant. His children: Marie and Vincentborn from his love affair with the actor Jean-Louis Trintignant. Under her long brown hair, the eldest, who has just celebrated her 18th birthday, laughs at the acrobatics of her little brother who has just turned six. Moments of happiness captured on the spot of a family in their daily life. But behind the joy, and years before a tragedy comes to destroy this home, this cliché already hides a tragedy…
The story between Jean-Louis Trintignant and Nadine Marquant, her maiden name, begins in the 50s. On the waves of France Culture in April 2022, the latter remembered their beginnings: “My first friend Annie Fargue (an actress, editor's note) played with him at the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre (…) She said to me: 'come and see him, he's a kind of Marlon Brando'. So I go to the theater to see the rehearsal and afterwards I said to my girlfriend: 'your Marlon Brando, he's a bit of a local, and he wasn't struck by me either'“, she said. If the relationship so don't start with love at first sightit's only a postponement.
In 1958, still with her friend Annie Fargue, Nadine Trintignant went one evening to the Alhambra to see the ballets of Roland Petit. “There was Jean-Louis,” she told Was Matin a 2021. When we left, he offered to take us home by car. Annie lives on rue du Beaupaire, near the Alhambra, so she leaves me alone with him.” Trintignant is doing his military service. He doesn't have the means to invite to the restaurant what was then a young assistant editor. Nadine therefore suggests that she cook some potatoes on the grill at her place. “Ravi, she sayshe comes up to my house. And our story began like this.”
When Vincent Trintignant was born, his parents were on the verge of separating
“He said a very nice phrase to me: 'we'll walk a long way together, we'll see if it's long or short.' And that reassured me.”completed Nadine Trintignant in France Culture. The path will last 15 years. It will be punctuated with joys. These fiery love letters that they exchange, these outings to the theater where they went every evening, these poems that Jean-Louis declaimed to the woman who would become his wife, in 1961. Then, in 1962, this first child, Marie, who was born to their greatest happiness… But the road they are both following will also lead them to drama. In 1970, ten months after his birth, Pauline, their second child, died. “Asphyxia linked to regurgitation of milk”, the doctors concluded. Little Marie, 8 years old, accuses them. “I will always remember this terrible sentence that she said to me at the time: 'Why did you let the doctors kill her?'remembered Nadine in Gala. First mourning, that the mother tries to exorcise by writing and directing “It only happens to other people”a film which tells the story of a couple who must face the death of their infant.
Three years later, Jean-Louis and Nadine Trintignant see Vincent, a new child, arrive in their lives. In those years, he made five films a year, his wife continued to write and direct. But this bohemian life which consists of crossing paths between two shoots will not last. Firstly because the memory of Pauline is still there, painful. “I read afterwards, in lots of books, that it happens to a lot of couples. When they lose a child, they lose the possibility of giving happiness to the other and that's what happened to us. We couldn't be really happy together in the last year.”noted Nadine Trintignant at the microphone of France Infoin 2021. Then because Jean-Louis has his head for work, and his heart for other women, like Romy Schneider with whom he will experience an explosive romance, shortly before Vincent's birth. Nadine, too, is already looking elsewhere, in this case, towards Alain Corneau, who will become her second husband. At the beginning of the 1980s, they divorced… but they were not done with the ordeals together.
Vincent Trintignant calls for help to help his sister Marie
Sunday July 27, 2003. Terrible news wakes the French from summer torpor. The actress Marie Trintignant, following what was then described as “violent quarrel” which occurred with his companion Bertrand Cantat the previous night, is between life and death. The French neurosurgeon Stéphane Delajoux estimate they are “very serious condition”. The rest, unfortunately, everyone knows. Marie's death, five days later, at age 41; his funeral where Jean-Louis Trintignant, Nadine and their son Vincent meet, all dressed in white, then the trial of Cantat, who had claimed to have wanted to “shoot himself”, prison etc…
How do you continue to live when you have lost two children? The parents of Pauline and Marie asked themselves the question. Jean-Louis, in particular, had procrastinated a lot. But he had chosen life. As for his wife, as she said in 2014 in a column published by the Huffington Post: “We do not have the right to suicide when we are a mother.” Mother, she certainly remained. For her last child: Vincent.
Nadine Trintignant's new husband adopts Vincent
After the departure of Jean-Louis Trintignant, the latter, like Marie, will be adopted by Alain Corneau, Nadine's new husband. It will therefore have both names. From a young age, Vincent Trintignant is immersed in the world of cinema. At just 3 years old, he made an appearance in The honeymoonmade by his mother. He began as an actor then a screenwriter alongside him, before becoming assistant director in 1997 on Beaumarchais, the insolent by Édouard Molinaro. He multiplies projects, notably with his mother on Victory or pain of women (2000) et Colette, a free woman (2003) filming during which his sister lost her life. It is he who, warned by Cantat at 6 a.m., will notice that Marie is bleeding from the mouth and will call for help.
At the same time, Vincent frequently collaborates with Alain Corneau on films such as The Cousin (1997), Stupor and tremors (2003) et Crime d’amour (2010). In 2009, the filmmaker went behind the camera with the short film Breakup gift. In 2013, in duo with his partner Christine Chansou, he directed his first feature film, Even a bird needs its nest, a documentary on forced evictions in Cambodia. A committed film, like the text he broadcast at the end of 2019 with his nephew Romain Kolinka, his sister's eldest son, calling for an end to violence against women after Adèle Haenel accused a director of assault sexual. Since then, the young man, who has always preferred shadow to light, has remained discreet.
Until the death of Jean-Louis Trintignant, in June 2022Vincent had remained close to his biological father. He often went to visit him in Collias, this small town not far from Nîmes where the filmmaker ended his days…
