From Rock Star to Killer
Bertrand Cantat had it all. Boyish good looks, impish smile, ambition, drive, and talent. When the band he sang in, Noir Desir, became France’s most successful (more so than Daftpunk? Shame on vous, mes amis), his soaring trajectory seemed mapped out for life. One evening in 2002, after one of the concerts given by his band, a beautiful French actress came to meet him. Her name was Marie Trintignant, and she was talented and successful. The two hit it off and quickly became an item.
When in 2003 Trintignant had to be on location in Vilnius, Lithuania, for the filming of the TV movie Colette: une femme libre, Cantat joined her. Unusually for partners of film stars on shoots, he hung about the set all day. Some thought it was because Cantat didn’t want his girlfriend to bond closely with any crew or cast members. This created minor problems in that Trintignant was often distracted, texting him or having trysts, but the crew, who included Trintignant’s mother and brother were tolerant. It was young love, after all.
As is normal for our times, both had a past. Cantat had been married to Krisztina Rady, a Hungarian art dealer, and had two children with her. He left her when she was pregnant with their second child. Trintignant had four children by four different fathers.
Soon after Cantat had left his wife, her house burnt down. She was supposed to have been there with the children but thankfully she wasn’t. I pass no comment on the aetiology of this fire.
On July 26th, Trintignant received a text from her ex husband, Samuel Benchetrit. The text was affectionate, and when the possessive and jealous Cantat read it as he was wont to do, he lost his temper. The two argued. The deputy director tried to make peace and, believing that the situation was now settled, walked the duo to their hotel and left.
Only one person - Cantat - knows exactly what ensued in the intervening hours, but early the next morning, he phoned Trintignant’s brother Vincent to say he was worried about Trintignant. He said that they had had an argument and that he had put her to bed but that she wasn’t waking up. Vincent went over and, finding his sister unresponsive and with obvious injuries to her head and face, called the emergency services.
Trintignant never recovered consciousness. At a local hospital she underwent two operations and then, at the request of her family, she was transferred back to Paris. Unfortunately, she died of cerebral oedema - swelling of the brain, which causes irreversible damage since the skull is a fixed hard box - a day later.
Cantat, still in Vilnius, was detained by the police. His original story was that Trintignant - who was at least 25kg less heavy than him and far less muscular - had hit him, and he had pushed her away whereupon she fell, striking her head against the radiator.
Unfortunately, this didn’t match the post-mortem findings, which showed the grim reality: Trintignant had received 19 hard blows to her head causing catastrophic brain damage. When presented with these findings, Cantat changed his story. He now said that he had slapped her back-and-forth after she attacked him. Perhaps realising that he was incriminating himself, he hastily added that she had become hysterical and had attacked him physically many times before he retaliated.
‘Hysterical.’ That old weapon of misogyny. Ever since the term was first coined, with its reference to the uterus (‘hystera’ is Greek for uterus), it has been used by men to demean and slur women. So it was here. Cantat’s defence portrayed her death as a ‘crime of passion’, and an accident, which still carries a shorter sentence in Lithuania. Cantat was sentenced to eight years in prison. In September 2004, Cantat was moved to a prison in France at the request of his defence. He was out in four years.
Why did he receive such a light sentence? The wife he had left had been called to give evidence in court. When asked whether he had ever been violent towards her, she replied in the negative, saying he had been a gentle soul. This is despite Trintignant having confided to her ex-husband that Cantat was violent towards her and had even chased her with a knife. Could he really have been so gentle to his ex wife? No one would find out until later.
When he emerged from prison, Cantat went back to Krisztina Rady. Perhaps she had lied for him because she had his two children and wanted her husband back. No one can ask her anymore, because in 2010, having left a message on her parents’ answering machine telling her that she was in grave danger because of Cantat’s violence, Krisztina hanged herself. She was found by her 12-year-old child. Cantat was in the house at the time; when the child told him what he had found, Cantat allegedly said nonsense, the child’s mother must be asleep. The child pointed out that his mother was very, very white.
After her death, it transpired that Rady had attended hospital with injuries that were suspicious and believed to have been inflicted by Cantat.
Bertrand Cantat is still free and producing music with his new duo. In 2018, French feminists clamoured against his appearance at several festivals and he pulled out. But he is a free man.
This Netflix documentary is succinct and hard-hitting (though not as hard hitting as Cantat’s murderous punches). I was left wishing that all defendants in court could be hidden from the sight of judge and jury, and anonymised, since there is no doubt that Cantat escaped real justice for the murder of Trintignant. Ironically, when the family were thinking of appealing the eight year sentence in Vilnius for being too short, Cantat was considering appealing it because it was - in his mind - too long for what he wanted seen as ‘manslaughter.’ Both appeals were dropped.
I watched this immediately after I had seen Trial 4. In the latter documentary, an innocent black man served 22 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. So the contrast was stark with this cocky, wealthy white man who served a mere four years for the murder of a woman and a lifelong pattern of violence against women. Go figure.