With Pascal Bonitzer, she created a duo of key screenwriters of Jacques Rivette cinema from the beginning of the 1980s until the death of the director.
The first uniqueness of screenwriter and director Christine Laurent (1948-2023), who has just passed away, is that she was initially a costume designer, set designer and scenographer and remained so for a long time. For the theater (Comédie Française, operas in Cologne, Lyon, London), for the cinema since I worked on three films by René Aliot (1924-1995, who was her husband and himself a decorator at the beginning) In the early seventies, Pascal Bonitzer became one of Screenwriters at the same time (dated I, Pierre Rivière, having slaughtered my mother, my sister and my brother…in 1976).
Undoubtedly an important meeting (everything is a bit fuzzy about it Jacques Rivette), since Laurent and Bonitzer would later become the official screenwriters at Rivette, according to a temporary settlement And laborandi Very strange. Jacques Rivette, after a decade (70s), marked entirely by improvisation, modified his technique.
Shooting should become an epiphany
The script, or rather the continuity of the dialogue, is written during the shooting, every evening, every night, by Christine Laurent and Pascal Ponzer. So not through improvisation in the strict sense of the word (after all, it often happens that filmmakers rewrite their script a few hours before it is shot), but through “work in progress” according to the established expression.
Cinema is done in immersion. After weeks of preparatory work sessions, sometimes with three meetings a week, the shoot should become an epiphany, in which everyone participates (technicians play small roles, actors contribute writing, provide ideas, first name, profession, character, etc.). Always this plot idea, Balzakian (title Gang of four points directly toThirteen date whose out 1 It was also a different kind), according to what was instigated on the film, Renoirian that the film is a rip-off, stop.
Christine Lawrence He will be part of this adventure.
many movies
So she will be the co-screenwriter of the last nine Rivette films: Gang of four (1989), Fine noise (1991), entertainment (1992), Maid Joanne (1994), Crisp from top to bottom (1995), Who do you know (2001), The story of Mary and Julian (2003), Don’t touch the ax (2007), the latest from the French director, 36 Views of Pic Saint-Loup in 2007.
I also made four beautiful films: FixedAnd Dizziness (1985) Eden Miseria (1988), across the Atlantic (1996), Agostino called me (2006), tomorrow? (2012) and stage plays at the Teatro da Cornucópia in Lisbon directed by Portuguese actor Luis Miguel Sintra (fetish performer Manuel de Oliveira, in particular).
