His death shocked all of France. At just 41 years old, actress Marie Trintignant, at the peak of her career, died suddenly on August 1, 2003, after being beaten by her then companion, rock singer Bertrand Cantat, while they were in Lithuania for a shoot. Repatriated to France, she underwent unsuccessful surgery and was buried a few days later in the Père Lachaise cemetery.
A funeral that was special, as all the guests had arrived dressed in white, which broke with the traditional black clothing worn on such occasions. A request from the family, and more specifically from Roman, the eldest son in his forties, age 16, as we learn in the book Black desirereleased in bookstores in recent days.
A teenager turned actor and restaurateur, born of the union of his mother and musician Richard Kolinka, who certainly preferred to retain the “angelic” side of a mother who had left much too soon. Present at the funeral with his famous father (ex-member of the Telephony group), the young man had found there his three little brothers Paul, then 10 years old, whose father is François Cluzet, Léon, born of their mother’s relationship with the technician Mathias Othnin-Girard and who was barely 7 years old and Jules, accompanied by his father Samuel Benchetrit, a little man of five years old.
Four boys knocked down by grief, under”the crushing sun“From the heat wave, says the author, who tells an anecdote: in the midst of hundreds of guests and strangers who came to pay a last tribute to the actress, young Paul cannot understand why his mother is no longer there. ”François Cluzet explains to his son Paul the cause of his mother’s death: “He is a man who wanted to have the last word”“, she says. A softened way of explaining an absolute drama, a way also for the little boy to accept a difficult reality.
A long day of tribute
The guests previously had a “ceremony (strictly civil)”and to a “musical tribute“orchestrated by Jacques Higelin, in which Lio, Barbara Schulz, Thomas Fersen or even Jean Louis Aubert had sung, for a portrait of Marie,”smiling, flowers in her hair“. Then they were all invited to cover the coffin with yellow flowers.
A sun ceremony, as the actress was according to her relatives and in which film characters had also participated (Patrice Chéreau, Josée Dayan, Claude Lelouch, Agnès Varda, Daniel Auteuil, Catherine Deneuve, Romane Bohriner, Sandrine Kiberlain, Jane Birkin, etc. ..) and politics like Lionel Jospin. And no one has forgotten…