Stephane Audran

The childhood of Stéphane Audran, born in Versailles in 1932 under the name of Colette Suzanne Dacheville, was not easy. Her father, who was a doctor, died when she was a six-year-old girl. And her little sister having also died at a very young age, her mother put all her efforts into caring for her other daughter, for whom she naturally wanted the best. For this reason, she did not quite look favorably on Stéphane’s desire to become an actress, although she already at an early age showed her taste for dressing up and characterizing herself as different characters.

Anyway, she got away with it, and after finishing her studies at the institute, she enrolled in drama following different courses. In one of them, the one given by Charles Dullin, she met the actor Jean-Louis Trintignant , whom she would marry in 1954. The marriage would not last long, as Trintignant fell in love in 1956 with her co-star in And God… Created the woman , Brigitte Bardot , with whom she develops a relationship despite being run by her own husband, Roger Vadim ; In any case, such a passionate union would also go to waste the following year. Instead, Stéphane will find a more lasting love in a director who was beginning to stand out, and for whom she would be the undisputed muse: Claude Chabrol ., then married with two children. It will be 16 years of marriage, more than twenty films together, and a son, who will follow in the acting footsteps of his mother, Thomas Chabrol . She would no longer marry, instead Claude did it with her script Aurore, with whom she will remain until his death. So many sentimental twists and turns did not prevent the actress from working again with Trintignant and Chabrol, all very French, as subscribers to the cliché would say.

But let’s not go so fast, and let’s go back in time. Her acting career was started by Audran in the theater in 1955, but it doesn’t call her attention too much, the stage will never be a flashy place for her. The cinema knocked on her door in the form of a short film in 1957, Le jeu de la nuit by Daniel Costelle. From here, small uncredited roles in films by prestigious directors emerge, such as The Lovers of Montparnasse ( Jacques Becker , 1958). However, she has set her sights on a promising director, Claude Chabrol, who has attracted attention with his debut, El bello Sergio (1958), and is hailed as one of the standard-bearers of the nouvelle vague. Through a mutual acquaintance, she achieves a meeting and a first role inThe Cousins ​​(1959) is the beginning of a long and fruitful professional collaboration, since then comes The Good Girls (1960), with a larger role.

The roles of the more or less spontaneous girl in these early films will not be the ones that will give Stéphane celebrity, however, but those of the prototype of a cold, distant and bourgeois woman, in Chabrol’s most Hitchcockian stage. The one she does in Las ciervas (1968) will be awarded at the Berlin Festival. The director is aware of having a female model that suits him, and in fact her character will repeat her name in five films, giving rise to what specialists know as the Hélène cycle. These are The Evil Eye (1962), The Unfaithful Woman (1969), The Butcher (1970), The Breakup (1970) and At Dusk (1970). Luis Bunuelhe would not remain indifferent to the compositions that Audran made for Chabrol, so he claimed it for The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). Her last two films help her win a BAFTA for best actress.

The long joint work of Chabrol and Audran does not prevent her from making films with other directors such as Claude Sautet ( Three friends, their wives and… the others , 1974). She and even she tries a career outside the French borders, although Hollywood will never end up making her their own. In 1974 she is in the choral film that adapts to Agatha Christie Ten little blacks . She can also be seen in The Black Falcon (1975), a pale sequel to the classic The Maltese Falcon (1941). More interest in her is Samuel Fuller ‘s war film Red One: Shock Division (1980), although her role is small. Or her presence as Cara in the legendary television series Return to Brideshead(1981). And there is great expectation before The Other Side of the Wind , an unfinished film by Orson Welles that is scheduled to be released soon, we don’t know exactly in what state.

In any case, of his films without Chabrol, the one that occupies an exceptional place is undoubtedly that jewel entitled Babette’s Feast ( Gabriel Axel , 1987), which adapts a short story by Isak Dinesen ., also known as Karen Blixen, and won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Audran composed an unexpected role in her career, as a widowed French cook, who emigrated to Denmark and came to brighten the lives of two austere spinster sisters, her composition of a woman who has led a hard life, but with a contagious “joie de vivre”. , supposed the soul of a film made in a state of grace, one of those unexpected miracles that occasionally occur on the screen. It is surely the best gastronomic film of all time, where the meaning of a meal consists in achieving communion, joy and enjoyment of the diners who gather around a table.

Even after his marriage broke up, Stéphane continued making films for Claude, such as Chicken in Vinegar (1985), The Cry of the Owl (1987) or Betty (1992). He does not refuse small roles, and although he is celebrating his birthday he continues in the gap, in the comedy Arlette (1997) and the family Madeline (1998). His latest film, La fille de Monaco (2008), is a comedy directed by a woman, Anne Fontaine .