Sandrine Bonnaire

May 31, 1967

Clermont-ferrand, Auvergne, France

She made her debut in A Nos Amours (83, Maurice Pialat). The part was in many ways a slice of life; a teenage girl, tossed about in the storms of growing life, experimenting with love, in turmoil over her family. It sounds like James Dean in East of Eden, but Dean was twenty-four when he played the teenager, Cal Trask. Bonnaire’s character in À Nos Amours was no Lolita but truly a young woman, excited, afraid, daring, sensual, and innocent. Everything was there, without coyness or boasting. From shot to shot, nearly, she seemed to be shifting in mood and age, and what was most uncanny of all—she had already one of the great watching, waiting, listening, attending faces. Here was a phenomenon of acting. There were times when even the deliberately tough, worldly Pialat seemed enchanted by her, and was persuaded to do little but observe her— or attend her. And he was playing her father in the film, caressing her performance with direct attention. The father seemed daunted by the beauty of his daughter—and the director/actor became resigned to his mortality in her presence. They have a late-night conversation scene that may be the best father-teenage daughter scene in movies. In other movies, too, directors seemed drawn into the simple and sufficient photography of her existence. In her bearing, her gestures, her resentful passivity, and especially in her movement, she dominates the excellent Vagabond (85, Agnes Varda) as well as the rather fatuous La Captive du Desert (89, Raymond Depardon), and she is the woman across the way in that exceptional voyeuristic movie, Monsieur Hire (89, Patrice Leconte). Her other works include: Le Meilleur de la Vie (84, Renaud Victor); Tir à Vue (84, Marc Augello); Blanche et Marie (84, Jacques Renard); Police (85, Pialat); /aune Revolver (87, Oliver Langlois); Sous le Soleil du Satan (87, Pialat); Peaux de Vaches (88, Patricia Mazuy); A Few Days with Mc (88, Claude Sautet); La Révolution Française (89, Robert Eurico and Richard Hef- fron); Verso Sera (90, Francesca Archibugi); La Peste (92, Luis Puenzo); and Jeanne la Pucelle (94, Jacques Rivette), worthy of comparison with Falconetti. She played with William Hurt in Secrets Shared with a Stranger (94, Georges Bardawil); with Isabelle Huppert in La Cérémonie (95, Claude Chabrol); Never Ever (96, Charles Finch); Die Sehuld der Liebe (96, Andreas Gruber); for French TV, doing Bette Davis in La Lettre (97, Bertrand Tavernier); as a surgeon in Une Femme en Blanc (97, Aline Issermann); Secret Défense (98, Rivette); Voleur de Vie (98, Yves Angelo); Au Coeur de Mensonge (99, Chabrol); Est-Ouest (99, Regis Wargnier); Mademoiselle (00, Philippe Lioret); C’est la Vie (01, Jean-Pierre Améris).

Sandrine Bonnaire Edit Profile

actress

Background

Sandrine Bonnaire was born on 31 may 1967 in Clermont-ferrand, Auvergne, France.

Career

She made her debut in A Nos Amours (83, Maurice Pialat). The part was in many ways a slice of life; a teenage girl, tossed about in the storms of growing life, experimenting with love, in turmoil over her family. It sounds like James Dean in East of Eden, but Dean was twenty-four when he played the teenager, Cal Trask.

Bonnaire’s character in À Nos Amours was no Lolita but truly a young woman, excited, afraid, daring, sensual, and innocent. Everything was there, without coyness or boasting. From shot to shot, nearly, she seemed to be shifting in mood and age, and what was most uncanny of all—she had already one of the great watching, waiting, listening, attending faces. Here was a phenomenon of acting.

There were times when even the deliberately tough, worldly Pialat seemed enchanted by her, and was persuaded to do little but observe her— or attend her. And he was playing her father in the film, caressing her performance with direct attention. The father seemed daunted by the beauty of his daughter—and the director/actor became resigned to his mortality in her presence. They have a late-night conversation scene that may be the best father-teenage daughter scene in movies.

In other movies, too, directors seemed drawn into the simple and sufficient photography of her existence. In her bearing, her gestures, her resentful passivity, and especially in her movement, she dominates the excellent Vagabond (85, Agnes Varda) as well as the rather fatuous La Captive du Desert (89, Raymond Depardon), and she is the woman across the way in that exceptional voyeuristic movie, Monsieur Hire (89, Patrice Leconte).

Her other works include: Le Meilleur de la Vie (84, Renaud Victor); Tir à Vue (84, Marc Augello); Blanche et Marie (84, Jacques Renard); Police (85, Pialat); /aune Revolver (87, Oliver Langlois); Sous le Soleil du Satan (87, Pialat); Peaux de Vaches (88, Patricia Mazuy); A Few Days with Mc (88, Claude Sautet); La Révolution Française (89, Robert Eurico and Richard Hef- fron); Verso Sera (90, Francesca Archibugi); La Peste (92, Luis Puenzo); and Jeanne la Pucelle (94, Jacques Rivette), worthy of comparison with Falconetti.

She played with William Hurt in Secrets Shared with a Stranger (94, Georges Bardawil); with Isabelle Huppert in La Cérémonie (95, Claude Chabrol); Never Ever (96, Charles Finch); Die Sehuld der Liebe (96, Andreas Gruber); for French TV, doing Bette Davis in La Lettre (97, Bertrand Tavernier); as a surgeon in Une Femme en Blanc (97, Aline Issermann); Secret Défense (98, Rivette); Voleur de Vie (98, Yves Angelo); Au Coeur de Mensonge (99, Chabrol); Est-Ouest (99, Regis Wargnier); Mademoiselle (00, Philippe Lioret); C’est la Vie (01, Jean-Pierre Améris).