The César Awards ceremony held tonight in Paris included a poignant tribute by Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan to late actor Gaspard Ulliel who died in January at age 37 following a snowboarding accident.
Ulliel, a star of Marvel’s upcoming Moon Knight sequence, beforehand gained the Greatest Actor César for 2016’s It’s Solely The Finish Of The World which Dolan directed and wrote.
In a 10-minute speech, a really emotional Dolan spoke within the type of a letter to Ulliel’s mom as a hush fell all through the Olympia live performance corridor the place the ceremony was going down.
Merci Xavier Dolan pour cet hommage à Gaspard Ulliel
#César2022 pic.twitter.com/XxsK3FFlaW — CANAL+ (@canalplus) February 25, 2022
Right here is an abridged translation:
“I wished to pay homage to my buddy, our buddy, Gaspard. I made a decision to do it within the type of a letter.
Madame,
I’m penning this letter to you with out understanding you nicely.
Exterior, behind the window of my room within the woods the place I’ve sought refuge, the snow twirls within the air. It’s transfigured by the sunshine of the solar, and the wind persists in beating it into free snow. Huge conifers rise in entrance of me, lined with a really heavy white deposit. Winter is calm, impulsively, after a brutal begin.
I knew that in coming right here to hunt out isolation I used to be going to begin pondering and writing about Gaspard. And apart from for an article, an interview or a prize, consider me that I had no intention to take action.
The day he died, I sought out his firm by rewatching a lot of his movies, together with A Very Lengthy Engagement…Maybe I deliberately determined that this movie would verify issues that we refuse to see, that I nonetheless refuse tonight, for instance, to see, to consider.
However I didn’t come right here to talk about the profession of Gaspard Ulliel — I may recount the record of good exploits and feats, of starry passages among the many stars of the Riviera, of the business. However what impact may these items have on the gaping wound of his departure?
I couldn’t assist however suppose he would have hated this type of elegy. He would have perceived an absence of class on this glorification. And he was very elegant…His expertise we nonetheless have and that, no can take away.
It’s the privilege of being well-known and an actor of his gentle to have the ability to depend on artwork to fade us into eternity whereas different essential bereavements for some stay unknown to all or change into so rapidly evanescent.
It’s a complete world that cried for Gaspard, it’s a complete world that also mourns him.
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