Olivier Assayas is a Réalisateur and Scénariste French, born the January 25th 1955 with Paris (France).

He is the son of the scenario writer Jacques Rémy, and the brother of the writer Michka Assayas.

Biography

Before passing behind the camera, Olivier Assayas signs many film critics. He publishes his first criticisms in the magazine Métal Howling (1979 - 1981) then in the Books of the cinema (1980 - 1985) and in Rock & Folk (1982 - 1985). He brings to the Books his taste for films of Kung-fu. Besides he directs the special issue on the cinemas of Asia which makes discover the cinema of King Hu; this special issue, published in the middle of the years 1980, is for Assayas the occasion to accomplish a great voyage in China and to meet in Hong-Kong and Taiwan the young realizers of the changing. But Assayas, with the very eclectic tastes, is also an enthusiastic admiror of Bergman and heirs to the New wave. It puts a term at its activity of criticism in 1985 to devote itself to the realization.

After having carried out some Short-measuring S and to have collaborated in the scenario of Go of Andre Techine, it makes her beginnings in 1986 with Désordre which is pointed out by criticism. In its first films, it approaches the universe of the rock'n'roll and youth. Scenario writer générationnel, it asserts himself like one of the heirs to the new wave, at the same time free and distancié. It is necessary nevertheless to await Irma Vep in 1996 so that it obtains a recognition of the public, with a film learnedly hybrid, which mixes homage to Louis Feuillade ( Irma Vep is the anagram of Vampira , one of heroins of the Master of the dumb man), with the cinema of the New wave, and with the cinema of HongKong, from which the actress Maggie Cheung is resulting. This one becomes his wife the December 26th 1998.

After a homage to the Taiwanese realizer Hou Hsiao-Hsien, it carries out At the end of August, at the beginning of September with François Cluzet, with the listening of a generation, in the mobility of Arnaud Desplechin.

Assayas launches out then in an ambitious project: to adapt the sentimental Destinies , the full novel of Jacques Burrs, writer expensive with Truffaut, describing the saga of a Protestant family in the world of the porcelain. It draws a three hour old film from it, with the three parts definitely marked by their respective styles, been useful by Emmanuelle Béart and Charles Berling in the main roles, with the romanticism paradoxically stripped of sentimentality. The density of the matter and the intensity of interpretation meet a mitigated reception.

In Demonlover , Assayas pushes its matter further: a subject eminently of topicality (personal competitions and companies around the markets incipient from the Internet), a total cynicism of the behaviors, and a virtuosity of the camera and assembly, not stripped of visual excesses. With the analysis, the film is one of the objects the most interesting products by the French cinema for a long time, but its treatment keeps away the public.

In 2003, Assayas turns again with Maggie Cheung which he divorced two years before, for Clean . She interprets there a singer drug addict, who tries to leave herself there to find her dignity and the guard of her child.

Olivier Assayas is the companion of Mia Hansen-Coils, actress and director of All is forgiven (left in September 2007).

Catalog of films

• 1986 : Disorder
• 1989: the Child of the winter
• 1991: Paris wakes up
• 1993: a new life
• 1994: the Cool water
• 1996: Irma Vep
• 1997: HHH a portrait of Hou Hsiao-Hsien of the series Scenario writers of our time
• 1998: At the end of August, at the beginning of September
• 2001: sentimental Destinies
• 2002: Demonlover
• 2004 : Clean
• 2006 : Noise (TV): (documentary on the festival Art Rock'n'roll of Saint-Brieuc) for France 4
• 2007: Boarding Spoils

Rewards

• Prix Jean-Vigo 1992 for Paris wakes up.

External bonds

• Fiche of Olivier Assayas in IMDb
• Interview of the scenario writer by Sancho does Asia
• Olivier Assayas on CinEmotions
• Approche criticizes on ecrannoir.fr