Agnès Jaoui

Jaoui's early career moved fast once it started moving. After her 1987 film debut in Hôtel de France and that fateful Pinter production where she first worked alongside Jean-Pierre Bacri, the two began writing together — a collaboration that would define French cinema for the better part of two decades. Their play Cuisine et dépendances was adapted for the screen in 1992 by Philippe Muyl, and then director Alain Resnais came calling in 1993, asking them to adapt Alan Ayckbourn's sprawling eight-part play Intimate Exchanges. The result was Smoking/No Smoking, a two-part film about free will and destiny that won the César Award for Best Writing in 1994 (Wikipedia). Smart, ironic, structurally audacious. The mid-to-late 1990s were relentless. Cédric Klapisch's 1996 adaptation of their play Un air de famille (Family Resemblances) showed just how precisely Jaoui and Bacri could observe social performance and family dysfunction — bitter humor, no easy resolutions, characters who don't quite deserve your sympathy but get it anyway. Another César for Best Writing in 1997. Then Same Old Song with Resnais, which they wrote and appeared in together, earning them a third César for Best Writing and Jaoui her first César for Best Supporting Actress (Wikipedia). Three awards in three years. Not bad. Her directorial debut, The Taste of Others (Le Goût des autres, 2000), was the breakthrough moment that made international audiences pay attention — 4 million admissions in France, four Césars including Best Film, and an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film (Wikipedia). Look at Me followed in 2004, winning the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes. She took a turn toward music with Canta in 2006, then returned to filmmaking with Let's Talk About the Rain (2008), which paired her with comedian Jamel Debbouze in a deliberately against-type role. Her most recent directorial work, Under the Rainbow (Au bout du conte, 2012), reworked fairy tale structures — Cinderella, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood — through the Jaoui-Bacri lens of social comedy and received strong critical notices for its writing (Wikipedia).