Patrice Leconte

Biography: life and films

Patrice Leconte is something of an enigma, a prolific, well-regarded film director that doesn't fit the mould of either the conventional auteur nor the traditional mainstream filmmaker. He has something of schizoid nature, and you might think, looking through his filmography, that there are in fact two Patrice Lecontes - one beloved by the critics for his intimate human dramas, the other blessed with a knack of filling cinemas for weeks on end with tacky populist comedies. Is it possible that the director who brought us the intense and hauntingly introspective Monsieur Hire was also the man who had previously helmed the cult hit Les Bronzés? It is the hyper-eclectic nature of Leconte's cinema that makes him stand out from the crowd, and also makes him so difficult to get a handle on. Is he a director who is frantically searching for an identity, or is he just someone who gets bored easily and has to keep genre-hopping in order to maintain his enthusiasm for filmmaking? A Patrice Leconte film always feels like a lucky dip. No matter how many films of his you watch, you can have no idea what Leconte is going to come up with next. Perhaps that is why we love him so much.

Patrice Leconte was born on 12th November 1947 in Paris, France, although he grew up in Tours. He began making films for his own amusement from the age of 15 and enrolled in the elite French film school IDHEC (Institut des hautes études cinématographiques) in 1967. After his graduation, he made a few short films (Le Laboratoire de l'angoisse, 1971, and La Famille heureuse, 1973). He then worked for a time as a critic on the Cahiers du Cinéma and contributed to the popular cartoon magazine Pilote, both as a writer and a cartoonist. He also made some publicity films before making his feature debut with the comedy Les Vécés étaient fermés de l'intérieur (1976). The film, which brought together Jean Rochefort and Coluche, was a massively fraught production and ended up being both a critical and a commercial failure. After this setback, Leconte redirected his efforts towards advertising.

In 1977, Patrice Leconte was approached by the popular comedy troupe L'Équipe du Splendid (which included Michel Blanc, Gérard Jugnot, Christian Clavier and Thierry Lhermitte) and invited to direct a film adaptation of their café-théâtre play Amours, coquillages et crustacés. That film, Les Bronzés, was to be one of the biggest cult French films of the 1970s and attracted 2.3 million spectators, Leconte's first success as a film director. It also launched the film careers of the members of the Splendid troupe, and within a few years most of them would become household names in France. Reluctantly, Leconte then directed the sequel, Les Bronzés font du ski (1979), which was also a box office hit.

In the early 1980s, Leconte notched up three more successes with further comedies featuring members of the Splendid team - Viens chez moi, j'habite chez une copine (1981), Ma femme s'appelle reviens (1982) and Circulez y'a rien à voir (1983). Then, having grown tired of comedy, he decided to branch out into other genres. His next film, Les Spécialistes (1985), was a hard-edged action thriller starring Bernard Giraudeau and Gérard Lanvin. Attracting an audience of 5.3 million, this was Leconte's last major commercial success until Ridicule, a decade later.

From the mid-1980s, Patrice Leconte moved away from popular genre films and developed a more intimate kind of cinema, allowing him to slowly build a reputation as a serious film auteur. Tandem (1987) was the first of Leconte's films to be critically acclaimed. An intense drama, the film featured Gérard Jugnot in his first important dramatic role and was nominated for six Césars (including Best Film) but only won the award for Best Poster Design (thanks to Louis Malle's Au revoir, les enfants stealing virtually every award). Leconte then made what many consider to be his greatest film, Monsieur Hire (1989), a sublime adaptation of a Georges Simenon novel. With superb performances from Michel Blanc and Sandrine Bonnaire, this is a dark and haunting exploration of voyeurism, whose seductive sensuality is matched only by Leconte's next film, Le Mari de la coiffeuse (1990), a beautifully oniric study in desire. Le Parfum d'Yvonne (1994) completes the trilogy of sensual near-masterpieces that now rank as Leconte's most inspired work.

Once again, having triumphed in one style of film, Leconte felt impelled to try something different. Ridicule (1996) was his first attempt at a lavish period drama, a sophisticated court comedy with a star-studded cast and Hollywood-style production values. The film was a commercial and critical success, both in France and abroad. It was nominated for twelve Césars (a rare achievement) and won awards in four categories, including Best Director and Best Film. The film was also nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes and an Academy Award, although these prizes eluded it. In his next film, Leconte brought together French film icons Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon for the first time since they last appeared together in Borsalino (1970). The film, Une chance sur deux (1998), was not well-regarded by the critics, but it did attract a million spectators.

The success of Ridicule raised Patrice Leconte's international profile, and his next films were eagerly anticipated both at home and abroad. La Fille sur le pont (1999), a romantic comedy shot as a film noir, proved to be a minor let down (it did win Daniel Auteuil his second Best Actor César), although the director redeemed himself with his second period drama, the beautifully atmospheric La Veuve de Saint-Pierre (2000). His next films Félix et Lola (2001) and Rue des plaisirs (2002) drew little attention, but L'Homme du train (2002), a dark metaphysical drama uniting Jean Rochefort and ageing rock singer Johnny Halliday, was widely regarded. After the brooding romantic drama Confidences trop intimes (2004), Leconte scored his greatest box office triumph with Les Bronzés 3 - amis pour la vie (2006), a shameless nostalgia fest that attracted over ten million spectators in France but was ignored (and rightly so) by the rest of the world.

Partly as a result of Les Bronzés 3 (which rates as probably his worst film), Leconte's critical standing has taken quite a knock lately. His next film La Guerre des miss (2009), a lacklustre comedy, did nothing to restore his reputation and was widely reviled. Perhaps this is why for his latest film, Voir la mer (2011), Leconte has returned to the more sensual and introspective kind of drama that first brought him critical acclaim. Although the film was not a great success, it does represent a welcome return to the more mature strand of the director's oeuvre. It is possible that Patrice Leconte's greatest films are yet to come...

Filmography

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