Laurent Boutonnat

Laurent Boutonnat made a remarkable entrance into cinema in 1980, as the 17 year-old director of the wordless horror allegory "Ballade de la féconductrice," which starred Orit Mizrahi as a murderous angel of evil. Having completed his studies at Cours Florent, he ventured into the music business after penning the lesbian love song "Maman a tort" with Jérôme Dahan. Needing a female singer, he selected fellow student Myléne Farmer and scored a huge hit. Over the next few years, Boutonnat directed Farmer in a string of epic music videos, including "Libertine" and "Tristana," which earned her the nickname "the French Madonna" and transformed the Gallic pop promo, in spite of their often provocative content. In 1994, he cast her as the mysterious anti-heroine of "Giorgino," a sprawling psychological horror set in an isolated orphanage in the aftermath of the World War I. Boutonnat had long planned this project and was so shattered by its critical mauling and commercial failure that he didn't make another feature, besides the 1997 concert video "Myléne Farmer: Live à Bercy," until he cast Gaspard Ulliel and Tchéky Karyo in a lavish 2007 adaptation of Eugéne Le Roy's Bourbon Restoration novel "Jacquou le croquant." He did continue songwriting with Farmer, however, although he left the direction of late 90s music videos such as "California" and "L'âme-Stram-Gram" to seasoned pros like Abel Ferrara and Ching Siu-tung.