The director died Thursday at his Parisian home, his brother Jean-Claude, as well as his wife and daughter, told AFP.

He died after a long illness.

For some, Beineix will remain the director of "Diva" (1981), César for best first work the following year, then of "The moon in the gutter" (1983), which made him known.

He remembered above all having been insulted at Cannes for this last film.

But most will remember "37.2° in the morning" (1986), seen by 3.6 million viewers and which has since achieved cult film status.

It will be rebroadcast on Saturday January 22 in the first part of the evening on Arte, in tribute.

Story of torrid and destructive passion between two flayed alive overtaken by madness, Betty and Zorg, interpreted by Béatrice Dalle, then unknown, and Jean-Hugues Anglade, the film is an adaptation of the novel of the same title by Philippe Djian.

Nominated nine times for the Césars, "37°2 le matin" was nominated for the Oscar for best foreign film.

Director Jean-Jacques Beineix at the Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival, October 31, 2006 Pascal GUYOT AFP / Archives

"Zorg and Betty are orphans", reacted on Instagram Béatrice Dalle, remembering the shooting as one "of the most beautiful pages of my life".

"I love you", she wrote again for the late director.

The actress Romane Bohringer, whose father Richard had obtained one of his first film roles in "Diva", also wanted to say "thank you" to the director: "This film has in fact changed our lives and marked my childhood. . I keep a dazzled memory of it".

Beineix had "a guts, a style, a method, the grandiose assurance of the stubborn", greeted the former president of the Cannes Film Festival Gilles Jacob.

"Ditch with Cinema"

Gaumont and the Académie des César paid tribute to him on Twitter.

"He was the filmmaker of a whole generation and had abdicated in front of the gap which he considered to have dug between him and the cinema. We however owe him very great films", reacted the Sacd (Society of authors and dramatic composers ) on social media.

Jean-Jacques Beineix at a press conference in Paris, April 28, 2008 Olivier Laban-Mattei AFP / Archives

Born in Paris in the Batignolles district, Jean-Jacques Beineix began studying medicine before preparing for the prestigious Idhec film school (now Femis) which he narrowly missed.

His first projects lead him to advertising.

In particular, he will produce the multi-broadcast fight against AIDS spot "He will not pass by me".

After several projects, he decides to leave the industry.

"It's good to put your talent at the service of causes" and advertising, "it was not causes", he will explain.

Its aesthetics will remain very marked by advertising, which its detractors will reproach it for.

After "37°2 in the morning" several films will follow, all failures, including "Roselyne and the lions" and "IP5 - L'île aux pachydermes", the last of Yves Montand, who died just at the end of filming.

In 2001, after nine years of absence, he returned with "Mortel Transfert", a complete critical and commercial failure.

He declares, moreover, that this film heavily indebted him.

This will be the last of his six feature films, followed by documentaries for television ("The children of Romania", "Place Clichy without complexes"...), under the banner of his production company, Cargos Films.

A sign of Jean-Jacques Beineix's eclecticism, the director and former porn actress, who has become a feminist activist, Ovidie, said she was very "saddened" by the death of the man who had "put her on track" by producing her first documentary, before they fall out.

© 2022 AFP