The face of Anouk Aimée, who died at the age of 92 on June 18, 2024, is intimately linked to Claude Lelouch’s camera. The director filmed her in his cult work crowned with the Palme d’Or, A man and a woman, released in 1966. A great friendship was born between the two artists who remained close throughout their lives. It is for him that the actress made her last appearance at the cinema in 2019, in fact, in The Most Beautiful Years of a Life. The filmmaker expressed his emotion at the news of his death.
To pay tribute to his dear friend, Claude Lelouch chose to publish on Instagram two photos separated by several years but on which we can see the strength of the bond that unites them and the tenderness of their relationship. With his pen, the director wrote in the caption: “Anouk, my Nounouk, left us this morning. She left to join Jean-Louis, Pierre, Francis and the others. She was my traveling companion, my lifelong friend. She gave me every chance and said yes when, as a young filmmaker, the others told me no. Thanks to her and only her, I became familiar with the light. Her silhouette and her grace will forever be engraved on a beach in Normandy. After having made the whole earth dream, now she will make the angels dream.”
Claude Lelouch was interviewed by RTL this very day. “When Anouk comes into my life, she changes my life. She said yes to me with Jean-Louis Trintignant and allowed me to make a film that made the whole world dream“, the filmmaker begins by saying. During her lifetime, she called the director several times a day, she who played such an important role in his life as a director. “This is a woman who talked about love all her life“, adds the artist. According to him, she was demanding in her cinematic or personal choices: “She felt very quickly when people were not being sincere. (…) She was in the essential.” “I had the chance to film her when she was young, when she was less young and when she was more tired“, concludes the director.
Unsurprisingly, tributes have multiplied since the announcement of the disappearance of the New Wave icon.
Patrick Bruel highlights her look and her benevolence, Richard Berry described her as his “cinema mother“, Carla Bruni is touched in the heart by his aura and the journalist Bernard Montiel is full of praise for his exchanges with the star.
