Paris (AFP)

On the screen, he never had a sense of celebration, but will remain the most endearing moaner of French cinema: the actor, screenwriter and playwright Jean-Pierre Bacri died Monday of cancer, at the age of 69 years old.

Figure of the theater and the cinema, the actor "died at the beginning of the afternoon", declared to AFP his agent, Anne Alvares-Correa.

"An immense sadness, a huge actor! Fuck it", launched on Twitter the actress Alexandra Lamy, borrowing from the preferred vocabulary of the characters of Bacri on the screen.

Because he was the master of the grieving and disillusioned anti-heroes, but deeply human: from the absurd humor of "Didier", in the skin of a football trainer who must keep a man-dog, to chiseled comedies with his accomplice Agnès Jaoui, through the hell of organizing a wedding in the "Sense of the party", Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache.

"Our sadness is immense, what luck Jean-Pierre to have known you", testified the duo of directors on social networks, whose film will be rebroadcast on Sunday on TF1.

Bacri was also a screenwriter, and had written several plays and films with Agnès Jaoui.

We owe their duo bittersweet masterpieces such as "The taste of others" (2000) or "Un air de famille" (first a play in 1994, then brought to the screen in 1996, with identical distribution).

Behind his funny and depressive characters, Bacri had "the taste of life ... The meaning of life ... The extreme dignity, at the end of the road", wrote the president of the Cannes festival Pierre Lescure on the networks social.

Jean-Pierre Bacri "was not contemptuous but he was exasperated by human stupidity. And not having his tongue in his pocket, he showed it", testified his predecessor Gilles Jacob, recalling this "categorical and hesitant voice, sharp and stammering, caressing and singing ".

- Jaoui, his accomplice -

Whether or not they have crossed paths with him on the sets, many film personalities have paid tribute to him: from Nathalie Baye ("The brilliant, wonderful Jean-Pierre Bacri has passed away ... enormous grief ...") to Gilles Lellouche ("Immense immense immense sadness") through Michèle Laroque ("He will be forever in my heart. I find it hard to imagine cinema without him").

Christian Clavier, who had shot "My Best Friends" (1989) with him, remembers a "man of great culture and great intelligence".

For most of the spectators, Bacri will remain for tailor-made roles, like that of the owner of the café, in a sleeveless woolen cardigan in "Un air de famille".

And cult replies: "It's the majority! Which one first? The one who believed that the Earth was flat? The one who wants to restore the death penalty? ... The one who puts a feather in her ass because it is fashion? Which one exactly? ”, his character, Georges, got upset in“ Kitchen and outbuildings ”(1991 for the play, 1993 for the film).

His character of endearing depressive was even exported outside France: "Le sens de la fête" attracted two million spectators abroad, in addition to the three million in France.

He had long won the recognition of his peers: the Academy of Caesar, which awarded him a total of five statuettes, hailed an "unforgettable and incomparable artist; a generous author, a sensitive actor".

The one who knew him better than all is probably his accomplice Agnès Jaoui, who was his companion for a long time.

This weekend again, she confided in an interview with the daily Le Monde how much Bacri had meant to her, since their meeting in 1987.

"Here is someone who expressed what I felt without even formulating it to me; who had reflections that struck me, relieved me, testified to common values, a relationship to good and evil that I shared, with a conviction that amazed me because it was so unique! ”she declared.

© 2021 AFP