If you watched the Oscars on Sunday night (or even just the highlights on Monday), perhaps you wondered who the exuberant Frenchman was, blowing kisses and proclaiming his love for our country as he took his victory walk, Best Actor Oscar clutched tightly in his Gallic fist. I know I was! On the heels of The Artist’s Oscar success, our Paris correspondent is back to provide an introduction to the first French actor to take home the Best Actor award, how his home country is embracing his win, and what it means to France.
By Alysa Salzberg
As he accepted his Oscar for Best Actor Sunday night, The Artist star Jean Dujardin’s exuberance wasn’t surprising. But France’s reaction to his nomination and subsequent win is.
Over the weekend, his chances at winning the Oscar were the topic of the feature stories on just about any news program here. For weeks, online articles about Dujardin, including ones promoting his latest film, Les Infidèles, were loaded with comments from readers like “Go Dujardin!” or “Best of luck, Jean!”
In some countries, showing support for a compatriot, be it for an acting award, a sporting event, or otherwise, is pretty standard. But in France, it’s not the norm. For me, Cyrano de Bergerac is a perfect example of the French attitude: he’s brave, intelligent, and romantic, but he hides his vulnerability behind wit, self-deprecation, and even anger. When the French talk about athletes representing them at the Olympics, for example, they usually focus on the bad performances. Every pratfall, every error, every elimination evokes an expression from many of them – not the “Oh no!” that most of us would say, but “Ah bon, voilà, à la française” ("Ah, there you go, that’s the French way").
So why was there all this positivity and encouragement for Jean Dujardin, an unknown actor in America up against the likes of George Clooney and Brad Pitt?
Although he wasn’t known in the US before The Artist, Dujardin is not only a successful actor in France; he’s regularly voted one of the country’s best-loved personalities. Born in 1972 in a wealthy suburb outside Paris, Dujardin was going to go into the family locksmith business but ended up following his heart doing stand-up and sketch comedy.
In the late ‘90’s Dujardin appeared on the show Graines de star (roughly similar to X Factor), which he won several times. But his breakthrough into mainstream popularity would come in 1999, when he was chosen to play the male half of a typical modern French couple in the comedy sketch series Un gars, une fille (A guy, a girl). The show is genuinely funny and completely relatable, and it’s not surprising that it became a wild success. Although it ended in 2003, reruns are still aired on several channels here, and audiences still happily tune in.
The series wasn’t just a turning point in Dujardin’s life because it made him famous. If you’ve watched any awards shows this year, you’ve probably seen that Dujardin is often accompanied by his wife. Her name is Alexandra Lamy, and she played the fille in Un gars, une fille. When the two started filming, they were both in serious relationships with other people. But onscreen, their attraction and affection towards each other is almost palpable. In the end, unable to deny their feelings, they broke up with their respective partners, and have been together ever since. Both are still acting, so they regularly appear together in public, but their three children (from their previous relationships) are out of the spotlight.
But Dujardin surprised his fans by taking on serious roles as well, as in the suspense thriller Contre-enquête, where he played a police officer investigating the rape and murder of his young daughter. He also starred in an edgy, hilarious adaptation of witty author Frédéric Beigbeder’s book 99 Francs, a lurid look at the world of advertising.
By the time The Artist came out here in France, no one was surprised that Jean Dujardin had chosen another unusual, challenging role. Still, he did it so well that he took our breaths away. His Palme d’Or at Cannes last May was the first in a series of awards leading, of course, to the Oscar, which even outside America is seen as la crème de la crème.
Whether he’s a guy in a typical couple, a ridiculous surfer, a silly spy, a father dealing with the loss of his daughter, or a silent film star about to lose everything, there’s a glimmer of the everyman in Jean Dujardin, and I think that’s what makes his success mean so much to the French. In him, they see something of themselves. His failures are their failures, understandable, regrettable, not something to mock. And his successes are something the whole country feels like they’ve won.
As the French celebrate Dujardin’s victory, I think in a way it feels like a shared award. Add to this the incredible bonus of The Artist winning Best Picture, and there's a downright gleefulness in the air. It’s a beautiful moment, and ephemeral: In a few months, the Eurovision song contest will come, and most likely the French will lose. Then it will be the Olympics where, no matter how many medals they earn, they’ll still jeer at and feel secretly let down by every misstep and loss made by a French athlete. I’m savoring this present feeling of happy pride, a kind of vibe that’s almost as rare as a Frenchman winning the Best Actor Oscar.
Alysa Salzberg is a writer and teacher living in Paris. This story was adapted from a longer piece on her wildly popular Open Salon blog, whose charming posts on Parisian life are frequent “Editor’s Picks.” She is also Editor-in-Chief of Beguile, a literary e-zine.