Cédric Kahn

Biography: life and films

Since his debut in 1990, Cédric Kahn has directed around a dozen films and, whilst he may appear to fit the text book definition of the thriving film auteur, he dislikes being labelled an 'auteur' and resolutely defies being pigeon-holed with his eclectic choice of subjects and styles. His films, a curious assortment of dramas and thrillers, have little to connect them and vary massively in tone and substance, from the child-like naivety of L'Avion to the visceral brutality of Roberto Succo. Kahn seems to delight in doing the unexpected, and this is perhaps the main appeal of his cinema: you have absolutely no idea what is coming next, except that it will engage you, surprise you and possibly even provoke you. He may not like the word, but auteur fits Kahn more readily than many other independently minded directors of his generation.

Cédric Kahn was born on 17th June 1966 in Crest, a town in the Drôme department of southeast France. His father was an architect, his mother a pharmacist. He acquired his passion for cinema when he was in his early teens. After obtaining his baccalaureate, Kahn went to Paris with the hope of making a career for himself in cinema. He began as a trainee editor, assisting Yann Dedet on the editing of Maurice Pialat's Sous le soleil de Satan (1987). Not long after this, he started making his own films - two shorts, Nadir (1989) and Les Dernières heures du millénaire (1990). He assisted Brigitte Roüan on the scripting of her film Outremer (1990), and then co-scripted Laurence Ferreira Barbosa's Les Gens normaux n'ont rien d'exceptionnel (1993).

It was in 1993 that Kahn directed his first feature, Bar des rails, a love story involving a teenage boy and a single mother. This authentic coming of age drama was appreciated by the critics but struggled to find an audience. It earned Kahn an invitation from the Franco-German television channel Arte to make a film in their series Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge. This engaging picture of adolescence was released in cinemas in a longer version as Trop de bonheur (1994) and received the Jean-Vigo Prize in 1994. It also won the Award of Youth at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. Kahn followed this with another television movie, Culpabilité zéro (1996).

Cédric Kahn's first notable success was L'Ennui (1998), a coolly erotic drama with Charles Berling playing a philosopher teacher obsessed with a younger woman (Sophie Guillemin). This won Kahn the Prix Louis-Delluc in 1998. Then came his bleakest film to date - an inspired adaptation of a book recounting the exploits of a notorious serial killer, Roberto Succo (2001). This was such a dramatic break from the director's previous films that it stunned the critics, but it still received rave views and confirmed Kahn's reputation as one of France's most promising young film directors.

Kahn then gave Jean-Pierre Darroussin one of his best and most challenging screen roles in another thriller, Feux rouges (2004), a highly imaginative adaptation of a Georges Simenon novel. Just when Kahn was gaining a reputation as a very capable thriller director, he changed tack again, and took an even more unexpected diversion into the realm of children's fantasy with L'Avion (2005). This whimsical but likeable film, about a boy who finds his toy plane has acquired a life of its own after his father's sudden death, looks as if it was intended for children but it also has great appeal to grown-ups.

Kahn was back on firmly adult ground with his next film, Les Regrets (2009), a return to the cold eroticism of L'Ennui with its portrayal of a man desperate to rekindle a past love affair. For his next film, no doubt influenced by the economic downturn after the banking crisis of 2008, Kahn takes a step or two towards social realism with Une vie meilleure (2012), a touching piece about a couple (Guillaume Canet and Leïla Bekhti) coping with the bitter aftermath of their own financial misfortune. Kahn's next film, Vie sauvage (2014) is a curious mix of social drama and fable, with a father (an exemplary Matthieu Kassovitz) abducting his children so that he can give them a better life as refugees from a society that he believes to be harmful. Between directing jobs, Kahn has also been busy as an actor, appearing in films such as Elie Wajeman's Alyah (2012), Axelle Ropert's Tirez la langue, mademoiselle (2013) and Joachim Lafosse's L'Économie du couple (2016).

Filmography

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