A scene from 'À nos amours'. Courtesy TIFF.
“Has any actress made a debut of such force—and youth—as Sandrine Bonnaire managed in À nos amours, made when she was fifteen? Excited, afraid, daring, sensual, and innocent. Everything was there, without coyness or boasting.”— David Thomson
At the age of fifteen, Sandrine Bonnaire exploded onto the French film scene with her breakthrough role in Maurice Pialat’s 1983 masterpiece À nos amours as a sexually promiscuous girl from an unhealthy home. Since that time she’s made over forty films in her career and is still going strong at the young age of 43.
Bonnaire is a fearless actress who has portrayed a defiant stringy-haired drifter (Vagabond, 1985), a beautiful woman drawn towards her peeping tom neighbor (Monsieur Hire, 1989) and in her sole directing debut (Her Name is Sabine, 2007) she exposed the failings of the French healthcare system through a deeply moving and personal documentary about her autistic younger sister.
The TIFF Bell Lightbox is celebrating this incredible actress’s body of work with a ten film retrospective titled Sandrine Bonnaire: À nos amours. Three films will have their Toronto premieres during this event: the Faulknerian tale of sexual and racial intrigue Les Innocents (Dir. André Téchiné, 1987), the romantic comedy Mademoiselle (Dir. Phillippe Loret, 2001), and the Kevin Kline-costarring and chess-based Queen to Play (Dir. Caroline Bottaro, 2009).
Sandrine Bonnaire: À nos amours runs March 10 to 19. For more information, visit tiff.net.
Fraser Turnbull is a Toronto-based blogger.
