Last Updated on December 29, 2025
{Warning: This post includes graphic descriptions of domestic violence and discusses a case of suicide.}
In the summer of 2003, I was an intern reporter at the Associated Press bureau in Paris. I came in expecting a “slow news” vibe— after all, little typically happens during the summer months in the capital, with politicians off work and news coverage typically focused on sports and “lifestyle” stories. But two major events changed all that: a deadly heatwave that killed thousands of people across France, & the “accidental” death of beloved French actor Marie Trintignant after her boyfriend, the rock star Bertrand Cantat, violently assaulted her in a hotel room.
My summer as a fledgling reporter was deeply marked by these two disturbing events, and while I went on to write several stories about the heat wave and its impact on the city, I toiled over several drafts of a “view from France”-type piece on the murder of Trintignant— a case the French press was almost resoundingly calling a “crime of passion”.
I never finished or published that story, something I’ve long attributed to my then-limited skills as a journalist and cultural commentator. I was only 23 at the time, and this was my first real gig as a journalist. It was easy to chalk it all up to being green.
But after watching a recent Netflix documentary series on the case, I’ve come to view my failure to finish that draft in a different light. From the beginning, I instinctively rejected the premise that Trintignant’s brutal murder was a “crime of passion”, but writing at a time when the term “femicide” wasn’t yet in usage— and the cultural habit of dismissing domestic violence was even more deeply entrenched than it is today—I think it felt impossible to buck the reigning narrative and make a good case to my Editors for a different one.
I also seem to remember (it’s all coming back!) suggesting that the case wasn’t being taken seriously enough as a prominent case of domestic or intimate violence, and getting a tepid response. Was this really news, or little more than fodder for the entertainment section: a piece that wouldn’t likely get much traction with English-speaking readers, who would be unfamiliar with the French celebrities involved?
I believe the Editors likely thought it was the latter. I scrapped my story, sensing their lack of enthusiasm and support.
Over two decades later, the Netflix mini-series seems like a crucial corrective to the heinous idea that a famous woman “died from love”, and that her murderer Bertrand Cantat was deserving of pity and understanding for the threats his crime posed to his career. As lead singer of the much-hallowed indie rock band Noir Désir, wasn’t this unfortunate “crime of passion” something that he would have to now suffer from for the rest of his life?
And hadn’t Marie Trintignant been a “difficult” woman who enjoyed a good row, who was known for “provoking” the anger of those around her? Surely Cantat wasn’t a constitutionally violent person capable of doing this again— he was just deeply in love, and things had “gotten out of hand” after a passionate argument between the couple turned physical.
These were the sorts of ideas that dominated French headlines at the time— both in august national newspapers like Le Monde and Libération and in celebrity tabloids.
But as “From Rock Star to Killer” reminds us in chilling detail, Cantat delivered up to 19 fatal blows to his partner’s face on the night he assaulted her in a shared hotel room in Vilnius, Lithuania, where Trintignant had been shooting what would be her last film role.
Despite the fact that Cantat initially told Lithuanian police during his deposition that he had pushed Marie and she had fallen face-first against a radiator, causing her injuries, the autopsy report showed that he hit her face so violently that her nose was broken; she also suffered from bleeding in the skull and a broken larynx.
Marie was totally unresponsive following the “accident”, and Cantat put her in bed to “sleep”. It was hours before he called for help, summoning Trintignant’s brother (also involved in the aforementioned film) to the hotel room. It was only then that an ambulance was called. Trintignant, in a coma when she was finally hospitalized, died several days later from severe swelling of the brain.
Nevertheless, following the release of the autopsy report, French newspapers and TV shows continued to spin the case as a “grand” love story gone tragically wrong. Both lovers suffered tragic ends worthy of Shakespearean drama, and the surviving member was to be pitied and forgiven (he frequently cried in public, and Noir Désir fans flooded early-internet messageboards and forums with posts in his defense.)
Very few advanced the idea that this was, from all available evidence, a horrifying case of a woman being brutally murdered by a partner who had gone into a jealous rage (at his own admission) because his girlfriend continued to exchange affectionate text messages with the ex-husband she shared children with. Very few admitted that if someone was capable of inflicting fatal injuries on the woman he was “in love” with because jealous of her past relationships, he was eminently capable of repeating this sort of violence.
I won’t go into all the details surrounding the ensuing prosecution of Cantat, the media frenzy, the criminal trial, and the early release of Cantat after four years in prison (he had been convicted to eight, for “murder, committed with indirect intent”). I won’t opine, either, on whether the documentary series, co-written and directed by the journalist Anne-Sophie Jahn, implies a bit too confidently that the suicide of Cantat’s former wife Krisztina Rády, with whom he had reunited, was the direct result of domestic abuse. (I will say, however, that there is solid evidence that Rády was indeed suffering from abuse by Cantat around the time of her death).
I’ll leave the rest of these details for you to discover in the series— including harrowing and touching testimonials from Trintignant’s close friends and family members—and from journalists who seem stupefied, even deeply embarrassed, at how differently the case was viewed and covered in 2003.
It’s all a gut-punch, but a deeply necessary one.
I (and many others) now see Trintignant’s death, however horrific and senseless, as one starting point in a sloooow reckoning around violence against women in France, and specifically crimes of “femicide”— the murder of women by intimate partners or their exes.
In Paris recently, I was strolling around the 19th arrondissement, near the Jourdain metro station, when a friend pointed out a mural on which the names of several women killed by intimate partners or family members— “victimes de la féminicide”— were inscribed. And in the Parisian suburb of Les Lilas, formerly the home of Marie Trintignant, a square and plaque are dedicated to her memory; the commemorative sign calls her an “actress and victim of femicide”.
Clearly, we’ve come a long way since 2003, right? Well, hmm. According to French government statistics, 96 women were murdered by their male partners or ex-partners in 2023. In 2006, that number was 148; in 2019 it was 146. While these have fallen below 100 in many years, the overall trend line is chillingly stable.
Still, the release of the Netflix series is something I find heartening. The reckoning with sexual violence and rape in France that began following the horrific case of Gisèle Pelicot, who showed tremendous courage in going public after she was serially drugged and raped by her husband and numerous other men, also points to something like greater awareness— and maybe, just maybe accountability, too.
I wish I had had the chutzpah and self-belief to fight harder for my story about Trintignant when I was in my early 20’s— but I try to remind myself that I was fighting an upstream cultural current: one that saw intimate partner violence as little more than trashy tabloid fodder— especially when celebrities were involved.
Rest in peace, Marie. And please do go see some of her films, if you can. She was a remarkable performer and woman, and she shouldn’t be remembered primarily for her terrible death.
“From Rock Star to Killer” is currently streaming worldwide on Netflix.
Courtney Traub is the Founder and Editor of Paris Unlocked. She’s a longtime Paris resident who now divides her time (as well as she can manage) between the French capital and Norwich, UK. Co-author of the 2012 Michelin Green Guide to Northern France & the Paris Region, she has been interviewed as an expert on Paris and France by the BBC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Le Figaro, Matador Network and other publications. Courtney has also written and reported stories for media outlets including Radio France Internationale, The Christian Science Monitor, Women’s Wear Daily and The Associated Press. In addition to going down various rabbit holes of curiosity when it comes to French culture, history, food and art, Courtney is a scholar of literature and cultural history whose essays and reviews have appeared in various forums.
