Sabine Azéma

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Sabine Azéma in 2016 at the Cannes Film Festival

Sabine Azéma (born September 20, 1949 in Paris ) is a French theater and film actress . She is one of the most popular actresses in her home country and is best known for her portrayal of extroverted characters in auteur films and comedies. She has worked for decades with the actors Pierre Arditi and André Dussollier as well as the film director Alain Resnais (1922–2014), who she has cast in most of his works since the early 1980s and from 1998 was also her husband.

Life

Training and beginnings at the theater

Sabine Azéma, the daughter of a lawyer , grew up with two sisters in the French capital. Fascinated by acting as a child, she took courses at the Parisian Lycée Carnot with François Florent , who later founded the well-known drama school Cours Florent . To improve her foreign language skills, she went to England after completing her baccalaureate , where she met her (future) first husband, the playwright Michel Lengliney . Back in France, she attended theater courses with Jean Périmony and then, at the age of twenty, began training as an actor at the renowned Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique (CNSAD), where famous mimes such as Jean-Paul Belmondo and Michel Bouquet had studied. After training at the Conservatoire (her mentor was Antoine Vitez ), she brought Claude Sainvinal to the Comédie des Champs-Elysées, where she made a successful debut in 1974 with Jean Anouilh's La valse des toréadors at the side of the departing Louis de Funès French theater. Azéma then appeared in other pieces by Anouilh ( Le Scénario, 1977), Françoise Dorin ( Si t'es beau, t'es con with Jean-Claude Brialy , 1978) and her husband Michel Lengliney ( Silence ... on s'aime , 1980) and knew how to inspire the audience primarily through her comedic talent.

Parallel to her work at the theater, Azéma was seen for the first time on French television in 1975 in the series La Preuve par treize . A year later, the 1.67 m tall actress made her cinema debut in Georges Lautner's comedy A Clumsy Way (1976) alongside Pierre Richard and Miou-Miou , having previously appeared in Bertrand Tavernier's award-winning historical comedy When the Festival Begins ... (1975) had to cancel because of a theater tour. Other supporting roles in film and television followed, including in Claude Goretta's award-winning cinema drama Die Spitzenklöpplerin (1977) with Isabelle Huppert , before she played her first leading role in the cinema comedy On n'est pas des ... elles non plus (1981) by Michel Lang received and soon afterwards appeared alongside Michel Galabru at the Parisian Théâtre de la Michodière in La Patemouille, a play by her then husband Michel Lengliney. It was through this that Alain Resnais became aware of Azéma, who, at the age of 15 or 16, had seen a film by him for the first time with Muriel or The Time of Return (1963). The well-known Nouvelle Vague director gave the fragile actress, who at the time often suffered from paralyzing stage fright, a leading role in his feature film Life is a Novel (1983). Located somewhere between drama, comedy and novel, the work tells of the failure of a happiness experiment at a castle in the Ardennes on three levels of time and reality . With the part of the uptight, romantic teacher with marriage ambitions at the side of Vittorio Gassman and Geraldine Chaplin , she achieved her breakthrough as a film actress, in 1984 she was nominated for a César in the category Best Supporting Actress .

César win and collaboration with Alain Resnais

While Azéma was left behind Suzanne Flon ( A Murderous Summer ) in the award of the most important French film prize , the improvisational comedian with the female lead in Bertrand Tavernier's A Sunday in the Country (1984) joined the ranks of leading French film actresses and also became known to an international cinema audience. In the drama she is the daughter of an aging and wistful provincial painter (played by Louis Ducreux ), who receives a visit from his family on a late summer Sunday in 1912. The role of the unmarried Irène, whom the father prefers to the bourgeois son ( Michel Aumont ) because of her boisterous lifestyle and with whom he willingly speaks about himself, death and art, earned the 35-year-old the award of the American National Board of Review and a César for best leading actress . Two years later - after Life is a Novel and the main role as a tragic heroine in love to death (1984) - she played again under the direction of Resnais: in Mélo (1986), the film adaptation of a play by Henry Bernstein , slipped she plays the role of a young wife who plans to poison her husband (Pierre Arditi) out of love for a well-known seducer (played by André Dussollier ). Desperate about her husband's loyal devotion and the callousness of her lover, she chooses suicide in the Seine as a last resort . The film, which is somewhere between tabloid theater, melodrama and triangular story, brought her again the praise of the critics and in 1987 the second César for the best female leading role, which until then only Romy Schneider and Isabelle Adjani had achieved.

Azéma in 1996

Azéma advanced by Life Is a Bed of Roses, love unto death and Mélo to Muse by Alain Resnais, with whom she also found her private fortune from the late 1980s. Resnais has given her leading roles in almost all of his works (except I Want to Go Home, 1989) since their first collaboration in 1983 . Under his direction, she acted in roles as varied as that of a frustrated businesswoman in the César winner Das Leben ist ein Chanson (1996), an unfaithful industrialist wife in the operetta adaptation Pas sur la bouche (2003), a religious Christian with erotic secrets in her heart (2006; her scenes are later counted among the great cinematic moments of 2007) or a narrator in a music documentary film ( Gershwin , 1992).

With Resnais she shared a love for musical comedies and their naive cheerfulness. He never forced his point of view on her and knew exactly how to incorporate her mistakes and weaknesses into film projects: "Without him I wouldn't dare to do a lot and probably never be really funny," says Azéma. She was often seen at the side of Pierre Arditi , with whom she has already been in front of the camera eleven times and is close friends. A highlight of their collaboration was Resnais' César winner Smoking / No Smoking (1993), the film adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn's play Intimate Exchanges, in which both actors play English small townspeople and impersonate all nine film roles. The starting point of both self-contained films is the decision-making of the insecure Celia Teasdale, the wife of an alcoholic school principal, to take up a cigarette. According to the “either-or” principle, depending on the decision of the characters, twelve different conclusions result, whereupon the French daily Liberation renamed the two actors Sapierre Ardema as a tribute .

Other well-known French filmmakers worked with the actress, who described herself in a 1994 interview with the daily newspaper outside the camera as “quite shy”. Bertrand Tavernier cast her in his war drama Life and Nothing Else (1989) as an elegant and class-conscious lady from a wealthy family who, with the help of Philippe Noiret, is looking for her missing husband in World War I. Bertrand Blier confided in her alongside Anouk Grinberg and Gérard Lanvin in the 1996 tragic comedy Mein Mann - For your love I do everything the part of a nymphomaniac . In Étienne Chatiliez 's comedy The Happiness in the Meadow (1996) she acted as the bitchy and unfaithful wife of Michel Serrault , who settles in the provinces as a ruined small business owner with a false identity. The deutsche film-dienst later noticed that it is the differentiated acting and the slightly satirizing acting of Azéma that take some crude scenes to the extreme.

According to the General-Anzeiger , having become more and more cheeky in the course of her career and having cultivated her comedic talent, she demonstrated this in the erotically charged Ménage à quatre Malen or Lieben by the brothers Jean-Marie and Arnaud Larrieu , her only collaboration so far with Daniel Auteuil . Chatiliez used her in 2001 for the comedy Tanguy - Der Nesthocker , in which she and film husband André Dussollier tried to disgust their 28-year-old son (played by Eric Berger ) out of the house. A family war of roses, which both actors celebrate "with the lustful silliness of children", according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung . With him (as well as with Arditi) she can go further as an actor, as her interaction digs deeper and deeper over the years, says Azéma. In 2009 she appeared with Dussollier for the tenth time in Resnais' drama Caution Sehnsucht , the film adaptation of a novel by Christian Gailly . She worked again with her husband in 2012 on You will still be amazed at the side of Pierre Arditi and again with Dussollier on Aimer, boire et chanter (2014), the last Resnais film.

Private life and work as a director

Azéma married the playwright Michel Lengliney in 1973 . From 1998 until his death in 2014 she was married to the French director Alain Resnais . Both marriages remained childless. She formed a close friendship with the photographer Robert Doisneau (1912–1994), about whom she published the documentary short film Bonjour Monsieur Doisneau ou Le photographe arrosé in 1992. In 1997 she directed the German-French channel Arte in the television film Quand le chat sourit, in which Resnais and her film colleagues from Life is a Chanson, Pierre Arditi, Jane Birkin and André Dussollier , among others , participated.

In 1987 Azéma was represented on the competition jury of the Venice Film Festival, alongside Vittorio Storaro , Károly Makk and Michael York , which, under the direction of the Greek actress Irene Papas, awarded the drama Goodbye, Children of Louis Malle with the Golden Lion . In 1996, she hosted the opening ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival (Maîtresse de Cérémonie) . After 17 years of stage abstinence, she took on a role at the Stephen Joseph Theater in Scarborough in June 1999 in the English-language play Garden (House & Garden) by Alan Ayckbourn , who had provided the literary models for Smoking / No Smoking and Hearts . For her part as French film diva Lucille, she earned critical acclaim.

Filmography

Azéma at the César Awards 1998

Actress (selection)

Director

  • 1992: Bonjour Monsieur Doisneau ou Le photographe arrosé (documentary short film)
  • 1997: Quand le chat sourit (TV)

Plays

Awards

César

  • 1984: Nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Life is a Novel
  • 1985: Best Actress for A Sunday in the Country
  • 1987: Best Actress for Mélo
  • 1990: nominated as best leading actress for Life and Nothing Else
  • 1994: Nominated for Best Actress for Smoking / No Smoking
  • 1996: nominated as the best leading actress for Happiness in the meadow
  • 1998: Nominated as best leading actress for Life is a Chanson

European film award

  • 1989: nominated as best actress for Life and Nothing Else

National Board of Review

  • 1984: Best Supporting Actress for A Sunday in the Country

Web links

Commons : Sabine Azéma  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b biography at allocine.fr (French; accessed on August 6, 2008)
  2. ↑ a b c biography ( memento of August 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) at cinema.aliceadsl.fr (French; accessed on August 6, 2008)
  3. ↑ Biography in Lexicon of International Films 2000/2001 (CD-ROM)
  4. ↑ Peron, Didier: "On est dans une sensation de recherche continuelle". In: Liberation , November 22, 2006, Cinéma, pp. 2–3
  5. ↑ a b Schulz-Ojala, Jan: suitcase for life . In: Tagesspiegel , March 29, 2007 (accessed on August 7, 2008)
  6. ↑ movie review Josef Schnelle in filmdienst 03/1988
  7. ^ Hanns-Georg Rodek , Peter Zander: The most beautiful film scenes 2007 . In: Die Welt , December 28, 2007, edition 302/2007, p. 27
  8. ↑ a b c Marcus Rothe: "Yes, it is good to make a decision". In: the daily newspaper , February 22, 1994, p. 21
  9. ↑ movie review from Stefan Lux in filmdienst 21/1994
  10. ↑ Film review by Rolf-Ruediger Hamacher in film-dienst, 10/1996
  11. ^ Raffelsiefen, Norbert: Film-Reigen . In: General-Anzeiger , June 15, 2006, p. 33
  12. ↑ Sterneborg, Anke: Tanguy at home with three people . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , June 3, 2002, No. 125, p. 14
  13. ^ Midding, Gerhard: The joys of partner swapping . In: Berliner Zeitung , June 14, 2006, issue 136, p. 19
  14. ↑ Alain Resnais . In: World who's who: Europa biographical reference. London: Routledge, 2002
  15. ↑ Guerrin, Michel: Robert Doisneaule braconnier de l'éphémère Le plus célèbre photographe français est mortle 1st avril à Paris . In: Le Monde , April 4, 2004
  16. ^ Venice Film Festival 1987 in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb; English); accessed on August 8, 2008.
  17. ↑ Carrière, Christophe: Casting: Et dans le rôle des maîtresses ... In: L'Express , May 8, 2003, p. 48
  18. ^ Cliff, Nigel: Single cast in double delight . In: The Times , June 22, 1999, Features.
  19. ↑ Billington, Michael: Master of marital pain . In: The Guardian , June 21, 1999, p. 16
personal data
SURNAME Azéma, Sabine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Azema, Sabine; Lengliney, Sabine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION french actress
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris