Bertrand Tavernier, a French director, screenwriter and film critic known for his films “The Clockmaker of St. Paul,” “‘Round Midnight” and “A Sunday in the Country,” has died. He was 79.
Tavernier came up in the wake of the French New Wave in the ’60s and was a BAFTA Award Winner for the film “Life and Nothing But.”
His relatives told the French publication La Croix that he died in Sainte-Maxime in the Var region of southeastern France.
Inspired by filmmakers like Jean Vigo, Jean Renoir and John Ford, Tavernier started his career in the ’60s in France in the height of the French New Wave, writing for the Pen club and aspiring to become a filmmaker, like many of his French New Wave peers. He did early work alongside director Jean-Pierre Melville and then went on to win the Silver Bear from the Berlin Film Festival for “The Clockmaker of St. Paul...
Tavernier came up in the wake of the French New Wave in the ’60s and was a BAFTA Award Winner for the film “Life and Nothing But.”
His relatives told the French publication La Croix that he died in Sainte-Maxime in the Var region of southeastern France.
Inspired by filmmakers like Jean Vigo, Jean Renoir and John Ford, Tavernier started his career in the ’60s in France in the height of the French New Wave, writing for the Pen club and aspiring to become a filmmaker, like many of his French New Wave peers. He did early work alongside director Jean-Pierre Melville and then went on to win the Silver Bear from the Berlin Film Festival for “The Clockmaker of St. Paul...
- 3/25/2021
- by Brian Welk
- The Wrap
Colo Tavernier O’Hagan, the revered screenwriter of award-winning films by Bertrand Tavernier and Claude Chabrol, died from cancer on June 13, according to a statement from the Lumière Institute in Lyon.
Throughout her prolific career spanning film and TV, Tavernier O’Hagan was a life-long, inspiring collaborator to her former husband, Bertrand Tavernier, on many of his most successful films, starting in 1980 with “A Week’s Holiday,” which competed at Cannes.
Born Claudine O’Hagan in England, with an Irish father and a French-Spanish mother, the screenwriter first earned critical acclaim with the script of Tavernier’s “A Sunday in the Country,” which earned her the Cesar award in 1985 for best adapted screenplay, and a National Society of Film Critics Award nomination out of the U.S.
She also collaborated with Tavernier on the Dirk Bogarde starrer “Daddy Nostalgia,” which competed at Cannes in 1990, and “Round Midnight,” a jazz-infused drama...
Throughout her prolific career spanning film and TV, Tavernier O’Hagan was a life-long, inspiring collaborator to her former husband, Bertrand Tavernier, on many of his most successful films, starting in 1980 with “A Week’s Holiday,” which competed at Cannes.
Born Claudine O’Hagan in England, with an Irish father and a French-Spanish mother, the screenwriter first earned critical acclaim with the script of Tavernier’s “A Sunday in the Country,” which earned her the Cesar award in 1985 for best adapted screenplay, and a National Society of Film Critics Award nomination out of the U.S.
She also collaborated with Tavernier on the Dirk Bogarde starrer “Daddy Nostalgia,” which competed at Cannes in 1990, and “Round Midnight,” a jazz-infused drama...
- 6/14/2020
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
City of Lights, City of Angels Film Festival
Plenty of films have dealt with the longing for a child or the emotional and political ramifications of adoption. But Holy Lola, Bertrand Tavernier's vivid and affecting new film, immerses viewers in the experience of foreign adoption. Revolving around a French couple's moment-to-moment endurance test through hope, red tape and an unfamiliar culture as they try to adopt a child in Cambodia, the film convincingly re-creates the semi-stateless state of Westerners who travel abroad in pursuit of a baby to love. At once thoughtful and visceral, the well-acted drama, which screened at the City of Lights, City of Angels fest, deserves wider stateside exposure.
Holy Lola is similar in setup to John Sayles' Mexico-set Casa de los Babys but without being static or didactic. Tavernier wastes no time on background before plunging into the humid downpours of monsoon season in Phnom Penh, where 40-ish "country doctor" Pierre Ceyssac (Jacques Gamblin) and his wife, Geraldine (Isabelle Carre) -- a bespectacled blonde who's weary of being told how young she looks -- have come to adopt a child. Along with other guests at their hotel, which caters to French would-be adopters, the Ceyssacs inhabit a strange limbo somewhere between tourism and exile.
The script by Dominique Sampiero, Tiffany Tavernier and the director is refreshingly free of psychologizing; through shorthand and the cast's naturalistic work, we know all we need to know about the hotel's cross-section of France, from working-class couple Marco and Sandrine (Bruno Putzulu and Maria Pitarresi) to Annie (Lara Guirao), alone and especially resilient. Whether still searching for a child or awaiting exit paperwork, they seesaw between hope and disappointment for weeks on end.
The drama's moral questions are as implicit as the need to care for a child. In postcolonial Cambodia, where bureaucrats quote Hugo or appreciate offerings of Shalimar, Westerners' only power is money. Wielding the most power are the story's unseen Americans, while the Ceyssacs ply local orphanages with food and toys, hoping to be in the right place at the right time when a child becomes available. They befriend a clinic doctor (Vongsa Chea) who helps them navigate the labyrinth. An encounter with baby traffickers in the impoverished, mine-dotted countryside proves dispiriting on many levels.
There's a wonderful moment when the Ceyssacs and another couple cross a dangerously busy thoroughfare four abreast, arms linked. It's a lovely picture of the way they collectively withstand the dislocation and try to make sense of a formidable bureaucracy. The equanimity Pierre and Geraldine attain during months of uncertainty becomes clear only when new people arrive at the hotel, anxious and green.
Alain Choquart's ace camerawork captures the intimate drama with immediacy, and Henri Texier's propulsive music is a major contribution.
HOLY LOLA
A Little Bear/Les Films Alain Sarde/TF1 Films Prods. production with the participation of Canal Plus, Sofica Valor 6, Sogecinema 2
Credits:
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Screenwriters: Dominique Sampiero, Tiffany Tavernier, Bertrand Tavernier
Producers: Frederic Bourboulon, Alain Sarde
Executive producers: Agnes Le Pont, Christine Gozlan
Director of photography: Alain Choquart
Production designer: Giuseppe Ponturo
Music: Henri Texier
Costume designer: Eve-Marie Arnault
Editor: Sophie Brunet
Cast:
Dr. Pierre Ceyssac: Jacques Gamblin
Geraldine Ceyssac: Isabelle Carre
Marco Folio: Bruno Putzulu
Annie: Lara Guirao
Xavier: Frederic Pierrot
Sandrine Folio: Maria Pitarresi
Michel: Jean-Yves Roan
Dr. Sim Duong: Vongsa Chea
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 128 minutes...
Plenty of films have dealt with the longing for a child or the emotional and political ramifications of adoption. But Holy Lola, Bertrand Tavernier's vivid and affecting new film, immerses viewers in the experience of foreign adoption. Revolving around a French couple's moment-to-moment endurance test through hope, red tape and an unfamiliar culture as they try to adopt a child in Cambodia, the film convincingly re-creates the semi-stateless state of Westerners who travel abroad in pursuit of a baby to love. At once thoughtful and visceral, the well-acted drama, which screened at the City of Lights, City of Angels fest, deserves wider stateside exposure.
Holy Lola is similar in setup to John Sayles' Mexico-set Casa de los Babys but without being static or didactic. Tavernier wastes no time on background before plunging into the humid downpours of monsoon season in Phnom Penh, where 40-ish "country doctor" Pierre Ceyssac (Jacques Gamblin) and his wife, Geraldine (Isabelle Carre) -- a bespectacled blonde who's weary of being told how young she looks -- have come to adopt a child. Along with other guests at their hotel, which caters to French would-be adopters, the Ceyssacs inhabit a strange limbo somewhere between tourism and exile.
The script by Dominique Sampiero, Tiffany Tavernier and the director is refreshingly free of psychologizing; through shorthand and the cast's naturalistic work, we know all we need to know about the hotel's cross-section of France, from working-class couple Marco and Sandrine (Bruno Putzulu and Maria Pitarresi) to Annie (Lara Guirao), alone and especially resilient. Whether still searching for a child or awaiting exit paperwork, they seesaw between hope and disappointment for weeks on end.
The drama's moral questions are as implicit as the need to care for a child. In postcolonial Cambodia, where bureaucrats quote Hugo or appreciate offerings of Shalimar, Westerners' only power is money. Wielding the most power are the story's unseen Americans, while the Ceyssacs ply local orphanages with food and toys, hoping to be in the right place at the right time when a child becomes available. They befriend a clinic doctor (Vongsa Chea) who helps them navigate the labyrinth. An encounter with baby traffickers in the impoverished, mine-dotted countryside proves dispiriting on many levels.
There's a wonderful moment when the Ceyssacs and another couple cross a dangerously busy thoroughfare four abreast, arms linked. It's a lovely picture of the way they collectively withstand the dislocation and try to make sense of a formidable bureaucracy. The equanimity Pierre and Geraldine attain during months of uncertainty becomes clear only when new people arrive at the hotel, anxious and green.
Alain Choquart's ace camerawork captures the intimate drama with immediacy, and Henri Texier's propulsive music is a major contribution.
HOLY LOLA
A Little Bear/Les Films Alain Sarde/TF1 Films Prods. production with the participation of Canal Plus, Sofica Valor 6, Sogecinema 2
Credits:
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Screenwriters: Dominique Sampiero, Tiffany Tavernier, Bertrand Tavernier
Producers: Frederic Bourboulon, Alain Sarde
Executive producers: Agnes Le Pont, Christine Gozlan
Director of photography: Alain Choquart
Production designer: Giuseppe Ponturo
Music: Henri Texier
Costume designer: Eve-Marie Arnault
Editor: Sophie Brunet
Cast:
Dr. Pierre Ceyssac: Jacques Gamblin
Geraldine Ceyssac: Isabelle Carre
Marco Folio: Bruno Putzulu
Annie: Lara Guirao
Xavier: Frederic Pierrot
Sandrine Folio: Maria Pitarresi
Michel: Jean-Yves Roan
Dr. Sim Duong: Vongsa Chea
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 128 minutes...
- 4/13/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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