Anne Fontaine

Biography: life and films

Anne Fontaine, one of France's most hard-to-pin-down independent film directors, was born in Luxembourg on 15th July 1957. Her original name was Anne Fontaine Sibertin-Blanc, and she is the daughter of Antoine Sibertin-Blanc, a professor of music. After studying dance in Paris under Joseph Russillo she had her first acting break when Robert Hossein chose her to play Esmeralda in his 1978 musical stage production of Notre-Dame de Paris. She made her screen debut the same year, in a bit part in Just Jaeckin's Le Dernier amant romantique (1978). Other small acting roles followed, in films such as David Hamilton's Tendres cousines (1980), Michel Caputo's Si ma gueule vous plaît... (1981) and Patrick Schulmann's P.R.O.F.S. (1985).

Fontaine was working as an assistant director on a stage production of Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Voyage au bout de la nuit in 1986 when she met her future husband, the film producer Philippe Carcassonne. He would produce the first film she directed, Les Histoires d'amour finissent mal... en général (1992) - this won her the Prix Jean Vigo in 1993. Fontaine then cast her brother, Chrétien Sibertin-Blanc, in the lead role of Augustin (1995), a humorous short film about an ordinary Joe who is obsessed with becoming an actor. Sibertin-Blanc was so successful in the role that Fontaine decided to use him two sequels - Augustin roi du kung-fu (1999) and Nouvelle Chance (2006).

It was with her next film, Nettoyage à sec (1997), that Anne Fontaine got herself noticed. A distinctive psychological drama depicting a perverse love triangle involving Charles Berling, Miou-Miou and Stanislas Merhar, this film was a commercial and a critical success, and it also won its author the award for Best Screenplay at the 1997 Venice Film Festival. Berling returned to play the lead in Fontaine's next film, Comment j'ai tué mon père (2001), an intense drama depicting the antagonistic relationship between a father and son that earned Michel Bouquet the Best Actor César. Fontaine then returned to the love triangle theme with Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Béart and Gérard Depardieu participating in the darkly erotic game that is Nathalie... (2003), one of the director's most off-kilter films to date.

By now it was hard for Anne Fontaine's admirers to discern a consistent theme in her films. In her subsequent films, she would continue alternating between dark psychological dramas and sunnier comedies, but in each case the narrative appears to revolve around some deep-seated flaws in the human psyche. The lead characters in these films all seem to be afflicted with perversions, ambitions or obsessions, sometimes with a benign outcome, but more often with a result that is manifestly destructive. A sublime example of this is Entre ses mains (2005), one of Fontaine's best films, which the author describes as an 'intimate thriller. It features Benoît Poelvoorde in probably his finest screen role to date as a character with a chilling split identity. With Isabelle Carré playing the heroine who succumbs to the charms of a possible serial killer the film cannot help resembling a perverse take on the Beauty and the Beast story.

Less impressive was Fontaine's next film, La Fille de Monaco (2008), a lightweight romantic comedy which gave former weather girl Louise Bourgoin her first big screen role. Fontaine followed this with Coco avant Chanel (2009), a stylish biopic of the fashion designer Coco Chanel, with Audrey Tautou proving her worth in a classy lead role. Next was Mon pire cauchemar (2011), a lacklustre rom-com which not even the pairing of Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Poelvoorde can redeem. Fontaine was back on form with her next film Perfect Mothers (2013), adapted from a story by Doris Lessing, and then she was admirably served by Fabrice Luchini in her next comedy, Gemma Bovery (2014), based on a comic strip spoof of Flaubert's most famous work.

Filmography

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