Fallen Giants

Today for the first time I watched the movie "Empire of the Wolves" by Chris Nahon with Jean Reno, Arly Jover and Jocelyn Quivrin.

Quivrin was a brilliant actor who started his career at a young age. I saw him in "L'enfant des Lumieres" in 2002 opposite Nathalie Baye and was fascinated by his brashness and arrogance and yet so much softness and subtlety; he was barely 23 years old and had the talent of a future megastar.

If two actors were going to influence the French cinema of the beginning of the 3rd millennium it was Quivrin, who in "Empire of the Wolves" actually managed to overshadow Jean Reno, not a small achievement, and Guillaume Depardieu, whose talent of pretty much the same quality and description was so massive, his own father, Gerard Depardieu, looked like small fry next to him in "A loving Father".

Guillaume Depardieu died of pneumonia in Oct 2008 at the age of 38. Quivrin was 30 years old when he died in a car crash in Nov 2009. At that time he was working on a scenario called "A man who thought he was James Dean". But the comparison between the young rising giants would be a mistake: Quivrin, unlike James Dean, had behind him a formidable career of 17 years in the cinema and theater and he was not a myth - he was the real stuff.

Nathalie