R.i.p. Gaspard Ulliel

[Chris Knipp]

GASPARD ULLIEL Nov. 5, 1984–Jan. 19, 2022.


GASPARD ULLIEL

He died two days ago at 37 in a skiing accident. (He had recounted that he came from a skiing family and almost skied before he walked.) He was one of the most prominent French film actors of his generation, a leading man notable for his striking looks and a wide range of roles. He started acting when still in school at the age of twelve. He first drew wide attention for his distinctive physicality (including a dimple that was a scar from a dog's bite when very young) as the mysterious, wild young man in he War who seduces Emmanuelle Béart in André Téchiné's 2003 Strayed (Les Égarés). He continued to gain attention as Audrey Tautou's boyfriend in A Very Long Engagement (his first César, third nomination, for Meilleur Espoir Masculin, 2004). He had a rare English language role as the young Hannibal Lector for the 2007 Hannibal Rising, then played a dashing young Duke de Guise is Tavernier's 2010 costume film The Princess of Montpensier. Very notably, he was a druggy and troubled Yves Saint Laurent in Bertrand Bonello's elegant and glamorous biopic (2014, NYFF). In 2016 he won the Best Actor César for the role of Louis, the young writer dying of AIDS in Xavier Dolan's It's Only the End of the World, playing opposite Vincent Cassel, Natalie Baye, Marion Cotillard, and Léa Seydoux. (He also played opposite Isabelle Huppert in recent years - Benoît Jacquot's Eva; and opposite Gérard Depardieu - Guillaume Nicloux's [I]To the Ends of the World[/I, both released in 2018.) Though he was straight, more than once when asked what his best on screen kiss was he said it was the one in Saint Laurent with Louis Garrel playing YSL's 1973 lover Jacques de Bascher.

His most popular film at the box office was Jacquou le Croquant (2007), where he played a macho young French folk peasant hero of the early nineteenth century: it got a lot of publicity in France (I was there when it was released and promoted on TV) but the critics there panned it and it wasn't theatrically released here. You can watch it on Amazon now. Vogue lists some others you can watch.

He did some television, including the strange 2019 Netflix sci fi series "Twice Upon a Time." You will be able to see him in in Marvel’s upcoming "Moon Knight" series.

Gaspard's parents were stylists and he also was a model notably for Bleu de Chanel, appearing in ads directed successively by Martin Scorsese, James Gray and Steve McQueen. He was intense, reserved, a powerful, masculine, sexy screen presence, a little repressed perhaps, a little cold. But this gave him intensity; and those who knew him said inside he was warm and friendly; and certainly he was well spoken and polite. The word often used for him in the French tributes is "elegant."

Having followed him ever since Strayed and been quite marked even by a little known film, Rodolphe Marconi's 2004 The Last Day, I find this sudden departure one of those losses that's hard even to take in, because one was so unprepared for it. Gaspard Ulliel should have had another forty years of career. His death leaves a big sadness and a big void.

See Gaspard in the company of French cinematic legends and the Quebecois prodigy at Cannes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auakx5HtaMo In an hour-long 2018 public interview "en tête-à-tête" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO8qqUy91rc.

In this French language Glamour interview he says his best asset is his butt, and the movie he'd like to take on a desert island is Lynch's Lost Highway "because I've never completely understood it." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMDb875gj5Y

In France this sad event has gotten major attention. The Cannes Festival director Thierry Fremaux released a kind tribute. The Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot spoke on TV of being "devastated."

Xavier Dolan's Instagram tribute has been widely quoted. Here it is in English and the original French:

It’s unbelievable, absurd, and so painful to even think of writing these words. Your discreet laughter, your caring gaze. Your scar. Your talent. Your listening skill. Your whispers, your kindness. All these personality traits that emanated from a shining sweetness. Your whole being transformed my life, a being that I loved deeply and that I will always love. I can't say anything else, I am drained, stunned by your departure.
_________________________
xavierdolan

C’est invraisemblable, insensé, et tellement douloureux de même penser écrire ces mots. Ton rire discret, ton œil attentif. Ta cicatrice. Ton talent. Ton écoute. Tes murmures, ta gentillesse. Tous les traits de ta personne étaient en fait issus d’une douceur étincelante. C’est tout ton être qui a transformé ma vie, un être que j’aimais profondément, et que j’aimerai toujours. Je ne peux rien dire d’autre, je suis vidé, sonné par ton départ.

He always said that the thing he most wanted to do was direct a film; he had studied directing at the University of Saint-Denis, but had to drop out to pursue his acting career.. He never got to do it.

New York Times obituary.
Wikipedia.


YOUNG GASPARD

[Chris Knipp]

From the French press

André Téchiné, who directed Gaspard Ulliel at 18 in Strayed/Les Égarés, in Le Parisien:

"I needed this singularity for my character, who was a man who came out of nowhere, during the war, like an apparition. Gaspard had this side of a creature from elsewhere. He had this physical beauty, certainly, but he also had something fantastic, very enigmatic. He didn't have the smooth beauty of a transparent model, he had something disturbing, strange, opaque... which we feel well, moreover, in his incarnation of Yves Saint-Laurent ("Saint Laurent" by Bertrand Bonello in 2004). By managing to be both corporeal and dreamy, he was fascinating."

See Yahoo.





Career review video in Le Parisian



From Libération:

Isabelle Huppert, actress
First of all, he was a marvellous actor, with whom it was very pleasant to work, quite simply. And then he was a very good person. I made two films with Gaspard, he played my son in A Dam Against the Pacific, which we shot in Cambodia, and then we made Eva with Benoit Jacquot. Gaspard had a mystery about him, but it didn't consist in taking him away from people, it rather engaged us to deepen and nourish the relationship we had with him. He was quite wonderful, with a certain gravity, not often light-hearted. I didn't know him well enough to know what was behind it, but this gravity gave him an intelligence of situations. He was a truly magnificent actor, he would have continued to be so - it's unreal to talk about him like that. He had a perfect command of situations, and his work, that's why I'm very shocked, and very sad, he didn't deserve this.

Léa Seydoux, actress
I'm shocked, it seems unreal, we were supposed to shoot together next April. We'd already filmed together twice, in Bonello's Saint Laurent and Dolan's Just the End of the World. I was delighted to see him again. Gaspard's disappearance is the loss of a national treasure, he gave off a crazy light. He was a very approachable actor, which may sound weird to say, and I don't want to say anything bad about actors, but it's not that common. He had a gentle]ness and a constant consideration,..[There was more, but for subscribers only.]

From BFM TV:

Gaspard in the night." It is with these words, on the front page, that Libération paid tribute to Gaspard Ulliel, the double award-winning actor who died suddenly on Wednesday after a skiing accident. The daily newspaper, which devotes four pages to the unforgettable actor of Just the End of the World and Saint Laurent, chose a sober black and white photo, in the image of this enigmatic and discreet man.

The actresses Isabelle Huppert, Léa Seydoux, Marina Foïs and Anaïs Demoustier salute in the pages of Libération the "hallucinating aura" of Gaspard Ulliel. "It's a good thing that we're going to be able to see him again," said Léa Seydoux, who has worked with Gaspard on two occasions and was due to meet him again in April for a new film.

"Gaspard Ulliel's "tragic end" is also on the front page of Le Figaro. The daily also highlights the secrecy of a "discreet, even mysterious" actor, who was "popular without being a film star". "He will be sorely missed in the seventh art," the paper said.

Le Parisien bids farewell to "the child prodigy of French cinema", "who embodied beauty and talent", and La Provence to the "shooting star" of the 7th Art. Le Dauphiné opted for a more sensationalist treatment and headlined "the terrible accident", with a montage superimposing a photo of the actor on a shot of the scene of his accident..

[Chris Knipp]

Au revoir, Gaspard...


Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the death of Gaspard Ulliel. I have not forgotten. His filmography will endure.

[Chris Knipp]

GAELLE PIETRI, GASPARD ULLIEL

Gaëlle Pietri, Gaspard's ex-wife and the mother of their son, Orso, carries out work to honor his memory, we learn from Europe1 on the one-year anniversary of his death - the protection of the seabed - the ocean floor.

Above all, she decided to commit herself to the protection of the seabed, a cause dear to the heart of her former companion, who was also sensitive to environmental issues. "Gaspard was a diver, sensitive to climate issues and concerned about the protection of underwater biodiversity. He would have liked the momentum generated by his death to go to the defense of these causes that were close to his heart. We wanted to honor his memory by contributing to the association," she explained on Instagram in February 2022, a month after Gaspard Ulliel's passing. His ex-wife went to sea this summer with the Tara Ocean foundation "which explores the Ocean to better understand it and share its scientific knowledge for a citizen awareness".