Michel Bouquet

Michel Bouquet was born in the 14th arrondissement of Paris on
the 6 November 1925. His father, Georges Bouquet, was a World War One
veteran and a wine-maker. His mother Marie was a milliner. He had three
older brothers: Georges, Bernard and Serge. Michel's father was always
a shadowy figure in his life: having been deeply affected by the war,
he used to talk very little and developed a very distant and estranged
relationship with his sons. When he was 7 years old, Michel was sent to
the "École Privée Catholique Fénelon", a Catholic boarding school
located inside a 17th century hunting lodge in Vaujours. He would keep
very unpleasant memories of this period his entire life, describing it
as "seven years of darkness and loneliness". Being used to receive
corporal punishment or other cruel and unusual forms of penalty for
absurd reasons -like keeping his arms crossed in a supposedly insolent
way- and to be bullied by older boys, Michel chose to withdraw into
himself and dream of exciting, picaresque adventures far away from the
school. This approach to life would help him developing his trademark
internalized acting style. Repelled by studying, he actually used to
enjoy being put in detention, so that he didn't have to mingle with the
other boys: the adult Bouquet would later call his younger self "a
sweet kid with an anarchic touch". In 1939, Michel came home for the
summer with a mediocre school study certificate. He would however never
return to the boarding school, since France and England declared war to
Germany on the 3rd September. Georges Senior was immediately sent to
the front and made a prisoner in Pomerania shortly after. Bernard went
to war as well while Georges Jr. had already been sent to a religious
school in Carthage. On the 14th June 1940 the German troops entered
Paris and Marie soon decided to relocate to Lyon with her two remaining
sons. They moved with Michel's paternal aunt, Marguerite. Marie didn't
want to be a weight for her sister-in-law, so she spurred her sons to
find some work to do. Michel became an errand boy in a bakery: having
been toughened by his stay at the boarding school, he now felt ready to
help his mother facing the adversities of life and raising the family.
When the armistice between France and Germany was signed, Marie and her
sons returned to Paris. Michel tried several new jobs in this period,
including warehouseman, dental laboratory technician and delivery man
in a bank. He was soon, however, to find his real vocation in life.
Marie was a great theatre lover and had the habit to bring Michel to
see operas, comic operas or great classic plays. He immediately
realized that he wanted to be an actor when he saw the legendary
Comédie-Française luminary
Maurice Escande playing Louis XV in a
stage production of "Madame Quinze". So, in May 1943, he decided to
look Escande's address on the phone book and, on a Sunday morning, he
went to visit him at his place while Marie was attending church. Young
Bouquet introduced himself to the actor by telling him that he wanted
to work on the stage. Escande asked him if he had memorized a piece to
recite. Michel tried the nose monologue from "Cyrano", but the theatre
veteran asked him if he hadn't learnt any other thing that suited his
physical appearance better. So he started to recite a few verses from
Alfred de Musset's "La Nuit de
Décembre" instead. After hearing a couple lines only, Escande realized
that the young man standing before him possessed enormous gifts and
decided to immediately bring him to one of his classes at the
Edouard-VII Theatre. There, Michel was allowed to finish the "Nuit de
Décembre" monologue in a room full of people. Many students were ready
to leave the class with a look of indifference, but Escande reproached
them, telling them that they should have better listened to Michel and
learnt a lesson from him. Although moved to tears, Michel managed to
finish his piece. The great Maurice Escande had named him an actor. At
the end of the lesson, Escande brought Michel home and convinced Marie
that he had to pursue a stage career.Bouquet began to learn scenes from many important plays in order to be
admitted to the CNSAD (the Paris Conservatoire). When the day of the
exam at the Théâtre de l'Odéon finally came, he already knew that only
7 students out of 300 would have been accepted. For his test, he had
studied the monologue from
Alfred de Vigny's "Chatterton" and one
of Smerdiakov's dialogues from
Jacques Copeau's "The Brothers
Karamazov". The same day, someone else was going to audition in front
of the same jury: it was an elegant young man wearing camel, who
possessed, in Bouquet's eyes, a certain charm à la
Gary Cooper. It was the soon to
become legendary Gérard Philipe, who had
already made a couple of appearances in acclaimed stage productions and
completed his first screen role in
Les petites du quai aux fleurs (1944).
He was going to play a scene from De Musset's "Fantasio". Bouquet
immediately noticed that Philipe projected a great sense of
self-confidence, something he himself had always lacked, since he had
many perplexities about his physical appearance (he was skeletal at the
time) and modest cultural background. At the exam, Philipe and Bouquet
managed to scrape through as sixth and seventh respectively. Michel
can't even remember who were the five students that were admitted
before them, since their careers never went anywhere. He became the
pupil of the accomplished stage actress
Béatrix Dussane, who had heard some
great things about him from Escande and used all of her powers to have
him getting admitted.Bouquet's first stage roles were Damis in
Molière's "Tartuffe" and Robespierre in
Romain Rolland's "Danton". It was an
interesting and indicative starting point to his career, considering
that Molière is the author he will always be most associated with and
that he would play "The Incorruptible" on several future occasions.
After having played roles in "Première Étape" and "Le Voyage de
Thésée", he made his first important professional encounter: writer and
playwright Albert Camus had
witnessed many of his auditions at the "Théâtre de l'Odéon" and he had
been so impressed by his skills to offer him the role of Scipio in his
upcoming production of "Caligula", which starred Philipe in the title
role. Bouquet said that he could do 30 shows only, as he had already
signed on to appear in a production of "La Celestine" under
Jean Meyer's direction. Camus
accepted his conditions since he wanted him to play the role so much.
"Caligula" was the only Philipe-Bouquet collaboration, but Michel would
go on to see Gérard on stage many times and always kept huge admiration
for him along with very fond memories of their relationship. Bouquet's
next stage credits were three
Jean Anouilh plays directed by
André Barsacq (who had personally
recommended him to the author): the moderately successful,
Shakespeare-inspired "Romeo and Jeannette", "Le Rendez-Vous de Senlis"
and "L'Invitation au château". In the first one, Bouquet provided
support to stage legends Jean Vilar and
María Casares and the "Combat" critic
wrote that he towered on the entire cast. Although he was initially
irritated by a negative comment made by Michel about the pacing of the
play, Anouilh went on to work with the actor on many other occasions.
After having made his screen debut as an assassin in the obscure
Criminal Brigade (1947),
Bouquet was given the role of a tubercular patient in the acclaimed
Monsieur Vincent (1947), which
was scripted by the author. And a couple of years later, he found his
first memorable screen role in another Anouilh-penned movie: Maurice,
the twisted (but not evil at heart) brother of the title character in
the suggestive and atmospheric
White Paws (1949), another
remarkable entry by the talented, but often neglected
Jean Grémillon. As his character is first
seen walking the docks at night, one can already feel a great leading
man "allure" à la
Jean-Louis Barrault around the
emaciated young actor. Interviewed in 2013, Bouquet still remembers
this role as one of his favorites. The same year he appeared in
Henri-Georges Clouzot's
Manon (1949), which was diminished by
Cécile Aubry's performance as the title
heroine.For the rest of the 40's and entire 50's, Bouquet mainly kept
collaborating on the stage with Anouilh, Camus and his former "Romeo
and Jeannette" co-star Jean Vilar, who directed him in several
productions, notably Shakespeare's "Henry IV" (as Prince Hal) and
"Richard II" (as the Duke of Aumerie), Molière's "Dom Juan" (as
Pierrot) and Georg Büchner's "Danton's
Death" (as another prominent figure of the French Revolution,
Saint-Just). Bouquet really liked Vilar for his talent to pick up his
actors. He actually thought that an actor's director should be a person
with a great eye for spotting talent and the skill to cast the right
person in the right role, but that his input should end there. He
didn't enjoy to have his directors telling him to play a part or trying
to over-impose their view on the character upon his own. That never
happened with Vilar. Anouilh wrote another great role for Bouquet in
1956: the title character in "Pauvre Bitos ou le Dîner de têtes". Bitos
is a poor man's Robespierre, a little politician in Post-war France who
wants to obtain power even if he doesn't possess the means to do it.
The author had created the role specifically for the actor because he
had expressed the interest to play "the Incorruptible" once more. In
1951, Bouquet was also seen as Dany Robin's
opportunistic brother (again called Maurice) in Anouilh's second (and
final) directed feature,
Deux sous de violettes (1951),
a (mostly) cynical, anti-bourgeois drama. His other film roles from
this period include the dim-witted King Louis X in the Dumas adaptation
La tour de Nesle (1955) and a
Russian revolutionary in the
Romy Schneider vehicle
Adorable Sinner (1959). He also borrowed his
incredible voice to Alain Resnais's hugely
acclaimed Holocaust documentary
Night and Fog (1956). On
the Parisian stage, he tried his hand at directing: first it was a
production of "Chatterton" (where he starred with his wife of the time,
Ariane Borg), then a revival of
George Bernard Shaw's "Heartbreak
house" (where Borg was co-director). The shows weren't lauded and he
never tried to follow this path again. In TV, he was finally allowed to
play Robespierre again in an episode of
Stellio Lorenzi's historical series,
La caméra explore le temps (1957).
The program was focused on the trial of Marie Antoinette and Bouquet's
screen time was consequently limited, but there's still enough ground
to make a case about the actor being the definitive incarnation of the
complex French politician. Bouquet had always been fascinated with the
character, imagining him as constantly living in a state of great
anguish and anxiety since he probably thought not to possess the
cunning of a Mirabeau or the orator skills of a Danton and knew that
everyone in those times was expendable. Sympathizing with what "the
Incorruptible" must have been feeling in his short, turbulent life,
Bouquet created a well-rounded and appropriately indecipherable figure,
finding the perfect balance between the cover of impassibility and the
neurotic nature of the character. In addition to this, he played the
ill-fated King Charles I and Napoleon's jailer, Sir Hudson Lowe, in his
two other appearances in Lorenzi's program.Bouquet's stage work kept offering him a lot of professional
satisfactions in the 60's: he expanded his repertoire to 'Eugene
Ionesco''s Theatre of the Absurd (his association with the author will
also be career-defining) and to several other authors. He was now
living an important phase in the history of French theatre, as it was
during those years that the stars of the Parisian stage were beginning
to discover the great English-language playwrights. In 1965,
productions of Harold Pinter's "The Lover"
and "The Collection" were staged simultaneously and featured the same,
exceptional trio of stars, as Bouquet was teamed up with the brilliant
Jean Rochefort and the sublime
Delphine Seyrig. Still, it was rare for
Michel to feel completely fulfilled, neither in his professional or
personal life. His marriage with Ariane had been a mistake (as she had
proved, according to his recollections, to be a gold-digging harpy) and
he had never managed to re-establish any emotional connection with his
father since he had returned from the front. A great perfectionist, he
also used to have an high lot of quarrels with his own
performances: he felt that his rather ordinary appearance and modest
height didn't give him enough 'gravitas' to be a great dramatic actor,
was equally skeptical about the quality of his comedic turns and
believed that his talents were probably better suited to a genre in the
middle, "the dramatic comedy". He often helped himself to get past
these dark moments with big quantities of alcohol. One day, after a
performance of "The Collection", a single meeting would make his
existence change for the better: stage actress
Juliette Carré approached him to pay a
lot of sincere and heartfelt compliments to his acting in the play.
Shortly after, Michel put an end to his marriage with Ariane and, even
if it would take years to get an official divorce, he immediately
started a family with Juliette and the two sons she had from a previous
relationship, Frédéric and Sylvie. Juliette proved to be the perfect
mate for Michel in life- as she could understand his introverted nature
and accept that he was a solo player- and ideal sparring partner on the
stage. He stated himself that he never felt so much at ease at playing
opposite anyone as he did with her. In 1965, Bouquet played both on
stage and TV a third important member of the French Revolution:
Fouquier-Tinville in
L'accusateur public (1965).
But his golden period as a film actor was about to start. His juicy
role as a perverse abbey in
This Special Friendship (1964)
had already raised his interest in cinema. Now, two of the most
representative directors of the French New Wave were to cross their
paths with his. His performance as the chief villain in
Our Agent Tiger (1965)
marked his first collaboration with
Claude Chabrol. Unfortunately the film
belongs to the long list of bad titles the director did for rather
obscure reasons. Bouquet and Chabrol's next journey together was
equally unexciting as the thespian's comedic skills were wasted in the
supposedly ironic spy story
The Road to Corinth (1967),
a sub-par product not much dissimilar from the silliest episodes of
The Avengers (1961) and
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964).
Luckily, the two men would soon team up again for a better cause. In
the mean time, Bouquet kept himself busy by appearing in a couple
movies made by the way more consistent
François Truffaut. In 1968 he played
the role of Coral in
The Bride Wore Black (1968)
opposite the great Jeanne Moreau in one of
her signature roles. The unforgettable masterpiece that would inspire
Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" movies
sees Moreau's Julie Kohler eliminating with extreme prejudice all the
men responsible for the death of her husband. As the second target,
Bouquet is the male actor who shines the most. Truffaut enjoyed mocking
the actor's melancholic/tormented characterization of Coral, thinking
that he should have been more casual and less serious. So he decided to
play a mean prank on him when he called him back one year later to
support Jean-Paul Belmondo and
Catherine Deneuve in
the fine
Mississippi Mermaid (1969).
Bouquet has a couple of scenes in the film as the implacable sleuth
Comolli. On the morning of the shooting, he found out that Truffaut had
completely changed all his dialogue, something that took him completely
off guard. This didn't prevent him from making the most of his little
screen time anyway. The same year, he would also find one of his most
iconic roles in one of Chabrol's best movies,
The Unfaithful Wife (1969). It
was the first time he was paired with the director's glacial wife and
muse, Stéphane Audran. Like in the case
of every other Chabrol-Bouquet-Audran collaboration, Michel provided
the acting, while Stéphane just added her very beautiful (but equally
motionless) face to the proceedings. Known for his explosive presence
on the stage, Bouquet favored, as a film actor, a performing style all
about subtleties and psychological introspection: he once said that
"stage acting is like the work of an ascensionist; screen acting is
like the work of a speleologist". Belonging to that rare breed of
actors à la
Jean-Louis Trintignant, able to
express a world of emotions by simply raising an eyebrow, Bouquet gave
a superlative performance as cuckolded husband Charles Desvallees in
Chabrol's classic, making his transaction from boring bourgeois type to
passionate murderer well-timed, impeccably constructed and absolutely
believable and managing at the same time to inject enough humour into
his characterization to make the role somehow sympathetic. Chabrol had
written the role specifically for him and Bouquet got to admire his
working method enormously, later calling him a great actor's director
and crediting him for having offered him the possibility to give one of
his best performances. Audran's ice maiden act proved somewhat
functional to the nature of her character (the bored and adulterous
Hélène) and she didn't ruin the movie this time around. The same can't
unfortunately be said about the trio's next collaboration, the uneven
The Breach (1970). As ex-dancer Hélène
Régnier, Stéphane gave one of her very worst performances, walking
through the movie without showing any trace of emotion not even when
witnessing her little son being thrown around the room by her mentally
deranged husband or waiting for the doctors to tell her about his
condition. Michel (as Hélène's father-in law Ludovic, a despicable man
ready to do everything to prevent her from getting custody of the
child), Jean-Pierre Cassel (in the
thankless, psychologically absurd role of private eye Paul Thomas) and
frequent Chabrol collaborators and great actors
Jean Carmet and
Michel Duchaussoy formed the rescue
team that should have made up for the huge void at the centre of the
movie, but the flawed screenplay was conspiring against the success of
'La Rupture' as much as Audran's performance and the end result was
rather disappointing.Bouquet's film career had now taken full flight and, between 1970 and
71, he found several roles that truly showcased his talents. He played
a ruthless inspector avenging the death of his partner in
The Cop (1970) and a mobster lawyer in
the Jean-Paul Belmondo-Alain Delon
collaboration Borsalino (1970)
(although his role was largely left in the editing room when the movie
was originally released, something that made him very distrustful of
commercial cinema). One year later, he played a slimy sycophant in
Harry Kümel's authorial horror
The Legend of Doom House (1971) and found an even
better role in another remarkable revenge movie,
Countdown to Vengeance (1971). The
movie is centered around Serge Reggiani's
character, a criminal who, after his release from prison, plans to get
revenge on his former associates for having betrayed him. The
spectacular supporting cast includes Bouquet, Jeanne Moreau,
Simone Signoret and
Charles Vanel. Michel got to play the
lion's role as a one-eyed villain, constantly wearing black, involved
in a mental game of chess with Reggiani for the entire movie.
Similarities with 'La Mariée était en noir' are strong and made even
more evident by the presence of Moreau and Bouquet. Michel rounded off
the year by giving outstanding performances in two Molière plays for
TV, Tartuffe (1971) (where he
was perfectly matched scene by scene by Delphine Seyrig) and
Le malade imaginaire (1971),
and playing another of his best film roles, Charles Masson in the
vintage Chabrol
Just Before Nightfall (1971).
The movie is arguably the director's deepest and most complex
reflection about the twisted, dark urges hidden in the meanders of
human psyche, as repressed bourgeois Charles kills his lover for
apparently no reason. Bouquet was simply mesmerizing in the part and
owned every celluloid frame of the movie, making the viewer feel the
character's torment on every moment and perfectly follow his inner path
(from his sense of guilt to his desire to be punished): all of this in
the subtlest, least showy way as possible. As his wife Hélène, Audran
did near to nothing in the film: in the scene where Bouquet confesses
his crime to her, Chabrol just filmed her reaction from behind
(therefore releasing her from any acting duty) and, when he has his
thrilling final monologue about his wish to atone, she just listens to
him, completely frozen, and restricts herself to put a hand on her
mouth once he announces his intention to give himself up. "Juste avant
la nuit" was released in the UK only in 1973 and BAFTA hit an all-time
low by ignoring Bouquet's performance, but bestowing a Best Actress
Award to Audran for her minimal work in the movie added to her
supporting turn in
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
(where she was easily the least talented main player).Galvanized by the quality of his recent body of film work, Bouquet took
a 5 years break from the stage (the longest he ever did) to do more
movies. Unfortunately, most of the roles he found in this period proved
totally unworthy of his skill:
Bons baisers... à lundi (1974)
(one of Michel Audiard's several dismal
attempts at directing) was particularly unremarkable.
Nadine Trintignant's
Défense de savoir (1973) put
together such wonderful performers as Bouquet, Jean-Louis Trintignant,
Bernadette Lafont,
Juliet Berto and
Charles Denner and couldn't make an
interesting use of any of them. It was clear to Michel that things
couldn't go on like this and that's the reason he headed back to
theatre so soon. His other film roles that stand out in the 70's are a
detestable policeman in
Two Men in Town (1973)
with Delon and Jean Gabin, a ruthless
newspaper director and unsentimental father in
The Toy (1976), a sculptor pretending
to go blind in
Vincent mit l'âne dans un pré (et s'en vint dans l'autre) (1975)
and particularly a drug lord in
Alain Corneau's bizarre, but
ultimately involving sci-fi feature,
France société anonyme (1974).
Despite having always publicized his lack of athletic skills, he gave a
great lesson in physical acting in the latter. He also started to
direct his talents towards the small screen and
Gabriel Axel offered him the possibility of
giving two particularly memorable performances. The first was as
painter Rembrandt van Rijn in
La ronde de nuit (1978).
The second was in the Balzac adaptation
Le curé de Tours (1980)
as the backstabbing Abbey Troubet, a vile man who ruins the life of
Jean Carmet's passive title character with the help of a deliciously
serpentine Suzanne Flon. He also appeared
in
Les nuits révolutionnaires (1989)
(a mini-series set during the French Revolution) and played Ebenezer
Scrooge in a 1984 version of "A Christmas Carol", winning a 7 d'or (a
French Emmy) for his performance. His stage work from the 80's include
playing Harpagon in "the Miser"- which invited the comment 'Whoever
hasn't seen Bouquet in The Miser hasn't seen The Miser'- and appearing
in a Chabrol-directed production of Strindberg's "The Dance of Death",
which was later filmed. A stage production of "Macbeth" opposite his
wife was very unsuccessful and he bode farewell to Shakespeare for
good. Bouquet's most important film achievement from this decade is
undoubtedly playing the immortal role of Inspector Javert in Robert
Hossein's Les Misérables (1982)
(released both as a 4 part mini-series and feature film). Although this
version (like nearly every other) couldn't completely do justice to the
spirit of Hugo's novel, the portrayals of the main characters are
arguably definitive, from Lino Ventura's
interpretation of Jean Valjean to Jean Carmet's César-winning
performance as Thénardier and of course Bouquet's ascension to King of
Javerts. Michel possessed the "physique du rôle" that the larger than
life Charles Laughton lacked in the
1935 film, was infinitely subtler than the likes of
Hans Hinrich and
Robert Newton were in their
respective outings, had more scope to express himself than the
well-cast Anthony Perkins and
Geoffrey Rush had in their mediocre
vehicles and any comparison between his work and
Russell Crowe's acting/singing performance
in the 2012 musical would almost be sadistic. Many people in France
strictly associate Bouquet with this part. His second most notable film
role from the 80's is a creepy notary in Chabrol's poorly paced and
constructed
Cop Au Vin (1985),
which was Jean Poiret's first outing as
Inspector Lavardin. Apart from acting, Bouquet was very busy teaching
the craft at the CNSAD during those years. Despite his modest studies,
he had gradually become an immensely cultured man within the decades,
having traveled a lot and grown a great interest towards literature,
music and the figurative arts. These interests were also the reason
that lead him to play real-life artists on several occasions.Bouquet was seldom seen on the silver screen in the 90's, but, when he
was, he most certainly lingered in memory. In 1991 he appeared in the
much lauded Toto le héros (1991) as
the oldest incarnation of the title character. The movie starts with
little Thomas dealing with all the adversities of life by dreaming of
an alter ego living all kinds of exciting adventures (something
reminiscent of what Michel himself had gone through during his
childhood) to eventually see him turning into an unhappy, disenchanted
man ready to do the most extreme and unimaginable thing to get even
with the rival of a lifetime. Bouquet also borrowed his voice to actor
Jo De Backer, who played his younger adult
self. His performance helped him cementing his status as a crucial
figure of European cinema and won him the EFA (European Film Award) for
Best Actor. The same year he also played painter Laubin Baugin in
Corneau's best movie,
Tous les matins du monde (1991),
while in 1993 he narrated Chabrol's well-made documentary
The Eye of Vichy (1993) (a
compilation of official newsreels originally broad casted in
Nazi-occupied France). Bouquet's theatre highlights from this period
include playing for the first time King Bérenger I in Ionesco's "Exit
the King" (his portrayal of the character remains one of his most
celebrated triumphs) and appearing alongside the great
Philippe Noiret in
Bertrand Blier's "Les Côtelettes". His
performance in this play won him his first Molière (France's
prestigious stage award founded in 1987).Even greater things were waiting for Bouquet in the 2000s: he accepted
very few roles, but they were the best any actor could dream of. Having
seen a performance of "Les Côtelettes" on the Parisian stage, Italian
novelist and occasional director
Roberto Andò chose him to play the role of
writer Tomasi di Lampedusa in his very interesting feature
Il manoscritto del principe (2000).
Having now reached the apex of his acting technique and maturity,
Bouquet gave the first of a series of absolutely essential
performances. Although he somehow regretted that he couldn't cast an
Italian actor in the role, Andò stated that he couldn't possibly
imagine the Lampedusa role played by anyone else. In 2001, Bouquet was
given the complex, multi-dimensional role of estranged father Maurice
in Anne Fontaine's noteworthy
How I Killed My Father (2001).
Michel had a great understanding of the central relationship between
his own character and Charles Berling's
bitter son as it mirrored in some ways the one he had with his own
father, to whom he had started to feel a bit closer long after his
death. Inspired by Fontaine's direction (he credits her for having
taught him a more relaxed approach to characters), the actor gave life
to a rather sinister, but eventually very poignant figure. At age 76 he
was nominated for his first César and won it. In 2003, Blier turned his
stage success into a major feature with
Les côtelettes (2003) and recast
Noiret and Bouquet in their original roles, a man who has trouble
defecating and a mysterious character who must help him doing it.
Although the movie is pretentious and often off-colour, the central
performances of the two acting giants are all to be savored. Michel's
next film appearance was as the title role in
L'après-midi de monsieur Andesmas (2004),
an adaptation of the Marguerite Duras
novel by the same name. He was already familiar with the text, but he
had always found it to be a bit unclear, albeit impressive. He had,
however, far less difficulties in penetrating the deeper meanings of
the story once he read the script by the movie's director,
Michelle Porte, who had started her
career as a second assistant director to Duras herself in
Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977).
The film follows Monsieur Andesmas, who has just bought a house for his
daughter, as he waits for the arrival of a mysterious businessman,
Michel Arc, who never shows up. This shadowy character can be
interpreted as a representation of many things: Bouquet saw him as an
emissary of death as he imagined Monsieur Andesmas' afternoon to be his
last one. The actor had all the vital characteristics of the
quintessential Duras protagonist, being multi-layered, introvert and
provided with the impeccable diction and thousand vocal inflections
that are indispensable to give power to the great author's affecting,
literary lines of dialogue. Aided by an excellent
Miou-Miou as Michel Arc's wife, he gave one of
his most touching performances and one that appears to follow a recent
pattern: all his latest movies seem to deal with the theme of the end
of life, either in an explicit or a veiled way. He carried on this
tradition when he next appeared in
The Last Mitterrand (2005),
playing President Mitterrand when death's approaching him. An unusually
good biopic, the film showed a more private dimension and different
image of Mitterrand, so that Bouquet didn't really have to live up to
people's common perception of the President: consequently, he managed
to give a very complex and involving portrayal of a man opposed to the
sheer exercise in mimicry and acting virtuosity that one usually
expects from this kind of picture. Again he was heart-breaking, again
he received a César nomination and again he won. After this new
triumph, Bouquet grew more and more selective of film roles, basically
declining every script that was sent to him. Like in the case of
Mesdames Fontaine and Porte, it was again a duo of female directors,
Swiss actresses Stéphanie Chuat and
Véronique Reymond, to win his
attention. Having eventually managed to find Bouquet's phone number (he
doesn't have an agent), the two girls offered him the leading male role
in their debut feature film, the little gem
The Little Bedroom (2010).
Bouquet adored the script and was pleasantly surprised that such young
ladies could have written a story that was such a beautiful reflection
on old age. He consequently played the role of Edmond, a sad, lonely
man who gets treated with neglect by his son and progressively develops
a warm relationship with his carer
(Florence Loiret Caille). He
again put body and soul in a project meant to give dignity to the last
days on earth of a common man. During the course of the decade, Bouquet
also kept to assiduously work on the stage, notably in revivals of
"Exit the King", "The Imaginary Invalid" and the "Miser", all directed
by Jacques Werler. He received splendid support by wife Juliette in the
first two, which were filmed. His incredible performance as Bérenger in
the Ionesco play will forever help people who never had the honor of
seeing him on the stage to understand what kind of chameleon he was as
a theatrical actor. He won his second Molière for his work in this
production.A late highlight in Bouquet's silver screen career was his performance as
Pierre-Auguste Renoir in Renoir (2012), an
account of the relationship between the great painter and his son Jean,
the future genius of cinema. Michel thought that
Gilles Bourdos's script possessed the
necessary grace to speak about some rather obscure themes. He had
always considered painting the most sublime of arts and, while studying
the Renoir character, he found himself relating to his
"nature-immersed" side above all. Although not as Bouquet-centered as
one would have wished it to be, the film still offered the great
thespian the possibility to shine and won him a third César nomination
for Best Actor.Bouquet's commitment to his stage activity was something that could hardly find a proper match among future generations of actors, approaching it like a sacred path as a missionary of sorts would do (his acting pupil Fabrice Luchini would indeed compare him to a monk). Having first announced his retirement from the theatre world in 2011,
he couldn't couldn't keep his word, as his bond to the theatre in general
and 'Exit the King' in particular proved to be just too strong: in 2013
he did a special performance of the play during the prestigious
Ramatuelle festival and, in early 2014, brought the production back to
the Parisian stage for a limited season. He later played conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwängler in a production of Ronald Harwood, winning once again a lot of admiration alongside a final Molière nom, and said at one point he would never quit the boards. His final theatrical role was as Orgon in a new production of Tartuffe directed by his great admirer Michel Fau, who also played the title role that had once been a defining one for Bouquet: the marketing and promotion of the show was largely centered around the latter's legendary persona, and the Crystal Globes gave him yet another laurel as the best stage actor of 2017, as a further testament to his evergreen core essentiality to the Parisian stage's life. In late 2018, it was announced that Bouquet would play the role of Albert Einstein in the play "Le case Eduard Einstein", focused on the relationship between the great scientist and his schizophrenia-stricken son. He did, however, withdraw from the project shortly after, also announcing his retirement from the stage for good this time, stating he was feeling too tired and devoid of the needed energy to approach this new challenge, and later adding that he already felt as if he "had done everything he could".Michel Bouquet peacefully passed away on the 13 April 2022: interestingly enough, it was the year that marked the fourth centenary of the birth of Molière. A veritable national treasure by then, he was proudly and fondly saluted by countless leading figures of France's artistic and politic world. Most people would say he had the right to consider himself satisfied with his career like very few can. Probably no other actor of his generation could find equally memorable
film roles in the new millennium. Having appeared in at least one play
a year in the 70 years period between 1944 and 2017 (with very few
breaks in between), he had put together one of the most impressive
stage resumes ever. And not many can say to be as respected as he was by
the public, the critics and their peers. However, the master thespian himself was never one to take anything for granted: earlier in his life, he had mentioned how he envisioned his actor's journey as being, for the most part, a sort of training until a final act where he could play a few roles very well. Still, taking into account the way he'd been able, even in the end, to satisfyingly eviscerate multiple roles that marked some of his most celebrated triumphs-- such as the King Bérenger one which he played over 800 times-- one can imagine with justified optimism that, by that time, Michel Bouquet would no longer be extraneous with that total sense of commitment he'd been entitled to for a very long time: he finally accomplished everything a dedicated actor of his kind could, leaving a legacy that couldn't be truer to the principles and goals of one who did value and envision his profession in such a way.The King may have exited our stage now, but he did so while wearing his well-earned crown.