On June 18, 2024, local time in France, the famous local actress Anouk Aimée passed away in Paris at the age of 92.
Most audiences became familiar with her through the 1966 masterpiece "A Man and a Woman" by the renowned New Wave director Claude Lelouch. This film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year and also received the 1967 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Aimée's final work in her acting career, the 2019 film "The Best Years of a Life," was also made in collaboration with Lelouch and actor Jean-Louis Xavier Trintignant.
Similar to Richard Linklater's "Before" trilogy, "The Best Years of a Life," as the second sequel to "A Man and a Woman," naturally revolves around the theme of reminiscing and longing for the protagonists' "best years." Towards the end of the film, Anne (played by Aimée) narrates her reflections on love and death in a voiceover after visiting Jean-Louis (played by Trintignant) at a nursing home.
"Now what scares me most, I guess that when we're alone, we fear dying, but in a couple, we fear the other will die first. That's it."
Trintignant passed away on June 17, 2022, at the age of 91. Two years later , he was joined by Aimée, and the classic on-screen couple kept their fictional love story of never-ending reunions and separations going in Heaven.
Just like in the three-part series, Aimée and Trintignant never became a couple in real life. They themselves, as well as the impressions and stories they left on the big screen, served as perfect models for Lelouch to craft tales of love and life. Of course, perhaps they were simply very professional actors who clearly distinguished their on-screen roles from their real lives; or it might be the case that Lelouch's film characters profoundly influenced them, causing their lives to periodically converge with those of Anne and Jean-Luis's.
Like many couples in this world, in this 3 parts of film stories, Anne and Jean-Luis are unmarried, and they are not obliged to be faithful to each other, yet they become the most important person to each other. This is certainly also Lelouch's own view on love, which he conveyed through the characters in "The Best Years of a Life." Anne, says to Jean-Louis' son, "Your father was not only a speed racer, but also a skirt-chaser." Meanwhile, the aging Jean-Louis retorts, "I went after so many women just to make you jealous." Indeed, he has succeeded and affirms, "Seducing 1,000 women is much easier than seducing one woman 1,000 times."
Such views and lines are certainly inappropriate in the current era of equality brought about by the #MeToo movement. But that was, after all, the 1960s, the "best years" that belonged to the director and the lead actors.
In 1965, when "A Man and a Woman" was filmed, Aimée was 33 years old, Trintignant was 35, and Lelouch was only 28. Indeed, it is rare for the director of a film that expresses views on love to be younger than the actors. As a result, Lelouch often allowed the experienced actors to improvise their performances.
Because Lelouch had a portable camera from a young age and took it on trips to the Soviet Union, he had long since learned to hide it in his coat. His strong interest in sports led him to film events such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Tour de France. It is thus understandable that he made Jean-Louis' profession a race car driver and included extensive racing footage in "A Man and a Woman". Similarly, his experience as a director influenced him to make Anne's profession a script supervisor and feature many scenes of movie production.
In fact, Lelouch's directing career did not start smoothly. After completing his first feature film "The Right of a Man" in 1961, he was ridiculed by a French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, which wrote, "Claude Lelouch, remember this name well, because you will not hear it again." However, five years later, when "A Man and a Woman" won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, it immediately changed its tone, lavishing praise on Lelouch who had previously been dismissed as someone whose name would never surface again.
It is believed that Lelouch was inspired to film this fate-changing Palme d'Or movie after witnessing a young woman playing on Deauville Beach in Normandy with her child while he was taking a stroll there. The sight of the frolicking mother and child sparked the story setting, and he gradually pieced together the plot later on in his mind.
In "A Man and a Woman," both main characters have experienced the unfortunate loss of their spouses. Lelouch himself has had at least five marriages to date, suggesting that his personal life experiences may have made him skeptical of vows of eternal love. In "The Best Years of a Life", Anne reveals that she has had "one and a half" marriages. The "half" refers to her second marriage that ended when she and her fiancé were exchanging wedding vows in a church, where she expressed willingness to stay by her significant other for better, for richer and in health, but questioned why she should do so even for worse, for poor and in sickness. Anne deliberately exaggerates her selfishness in front of her beloved Jean-Louis. Now that they are in their 70s and 80s, nearing their twilight years, such discussions just seem insignificant.
While "The Best Years of a Life" is a follow-up to "A Man and a Woman" 53 years later, there was another sequel between them. As early as 1986, Lelouch reunited the two actors for this sequel straightforwardly titled "A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later." It received poor reviews, as it greedily introduced multiple storylines, and lost the simplicity of the original plot. However, whenever the original cast reunited, it always allowed audiences to see how characters have grown on and off screen, and it is apparent that compared to women, men tend to mature late but age quickly.
In "The Best Years of a Life," Anne, who is as busy as a bee, looks much younger than Jean-Louis, who is wheelchair-bound and resides at a nursing home. "That's because of makeup," she explains.
Towards the end, Jean-Louis reminisces about his youthful days, when he went after different girls as quickly as he drove his car. "Once, to chase after a girl, I sped through Paris at 200 kilometers per hour, beat 18 red lights and violated countless speed limits. Luckily, it was 6 a.m., and there weren't many pedestrians or vehicles on the streets. It felt like I owned the whole of Paris."
"But when we were together, you always drove so slowly," Anne asks in confusion.
"That's because I wanted to spend as much time as possible with you. You're so beautiful. I was in no hurry. I wanted to keep you in my car for the rest of my life," Jean-Louis replies affectionately.
Anne and Jean-Louis first met on the night of December 19, 1965. That evening, Charles de Gaulle defeated François Mitterrand in the French presidential election.
Both the man and woman in "A Man and a Woman" have since passed away. As years pass, the elderly residents of the nursing home on the outskirts of Paris may no longer have any recollection of the presidential election at the end of 1965, recall that Anne and Jean-Louis were an on-screen couple, or remember the actors and director of "A Man and a Woman." But surely, no one will forget the theme song that is more classic than the film itself. It has a simple and peppy melody that's so deeply ingrained in our memory.
"If we drive fast enough, we can catch the sunset."
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