Paris (AFP)
A pale face, a brown fringe, large deep blue eyes: the actress, director and singer Anna Karina, a figure in the cinema of Jean-Luc Godard, was an icon of the New Wave.
In the memory of moviegoers, the actress, who died on Saturday of cancer at 79, will remain this libertarian ingenuous who nonchalantly exclaimed "What can I do? I don't know what to do ...", cult replica of "Pierrot le fou" (1965, with Jean-Paul Belmondo).
"It happened completely by chance: we are on the beach and Jean-Luc tells me to walk and to be bored. I say + okay, I can throw stones in the sea, and other than that Can I do, I don't know what to do? + He tells me + you're going to say that all the time + ", she told AFP in 2018.
Anna Karina had made seven films with Godard, then her companion, in the 1960s, among which "A woman is a woman" (prize for the best interpretation at the Berlin festival in 1962) or "Living her life".
"We loved each other very much. But it was complicated to live with him," the actress told AFP in March 2018, when her first film as director was resumed, "Living together (1973) .
"It was someone who could say + I'm going to get cigarettes + and then came back three weeks later. It was a time when there was no smartphone or answering machine," she added.
Their relationship was marked by a drama, the loss of the child she was carrying. The last time the legendary couple found each other was over 20 years ago. Since then, no contact.
"He is in Switzerland and does not open the door," she assured AFP. "No, it doesn't make me sad. It's his life after all."
From a childhood in Denmark tossed between a distant mother, a grandmother who died too early and an adored grandfather, she had kept her fragility on edge.
Still a minor, she hitchhiked in Paris with the intention of becoming an actress. She was spotted on the terrace of Deux Magots, a legendary café in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district, and became a model.
- Coco Chanel and Gainsbourg -
During a session, "there was this extraordinary lady who asked me + what's your name my little one? +" "Hanne Karin Bayer". "Ah no, she said to me in a military tone, your name will be Anna Karina". "When she left I asked who it was. It was Coco Chanel," she remembered last year for AFP.
Godard spots her in an advertisement and offers her a small role in "A bout de souffle" (1960) with Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo, which she declines because of a bare scene.
He will recall her a few months later for the main role of "Petit soldat", a film about the Algerian war which will be banned. On the set, an idyll is born between them.
For ten years, Anna Karina does not stop shooting but she remains the favorite actress of Godard. She works with Jacques Rivette ("La Nun", 1966) but neither Chabrol nor Truffaut, the other directors of the Nouvelle vague, make it turn. "I was Jean-Luc's wife. It probably made them a little scared," she said later.
In 1973, she directed her first film, "Living together", a love story against a background of drugs and alcohol.
"It is a portrait of the time of my youth. I saw people around me sink and die," she said.
She was the first actress to make a feature film: "Everyone said + How dare she +. There was a macho side to it."
After Godard, she successively married filmmakers Pierre Fabre and Daniel Duval and then, in 1982, with American director Dennis Berry, by her side when she died.
As a singer, she had great success in 1967 with Serge Gainsbourg's "Sous le Soleil Exactly", a song taken from Pierre Koralnik's musical television drama "Anna".
jr-ram-slb-pr / hr / swi
© 2019 AFP