Celebrities like Louis Garrel or Catherine Deneuve but also many anonymous people attended the funeral of the actor who died at the age of 37, this Thursday in the Saint-Eustache church in Paris.
The face of an angel, cigarette in beak, displayed in one of Release the day after his death, is now placed in front of the entrance to the Saint-Eustache church in Paris. A week after the tragic death of actor Gaspard Ulliel in a skiing accident, hundreds of onlookers crowd this Thursday behind the barriers that separate them from the stars. Here they are arriving in dribs and drabs, rushing inside, eyes closed.
The silence is heavy, the eyes sometimes moist. One hardly dares to whisper when one sees a known figure. Here Louis Garrel, there Catherine Deneuve, one of the last to enter the church. “A life that rocks like that, it’s really tragic”, loose a fifty-year-old who came with his wife, when the coffin came out of the car. Some applause resounds, quickly taken up in chorus by the small crowd gathered there.
Mass books are distributed, sometimes causing a somewhat ridiculous crowd. Axel recovered his because he was there, in front, before extricating himself, a little embarrassed by the behavior of some. “Looks like they’re there to see stars and say they were there, he gets annoyed. It’s hard because I thought coming here would help me with my grief.” The 18-year-old student in film school worshiped the actor whom he sets up as an example, even as an inspiration.
“It’s been a week but I’m still stunned”
“He still had so much to offer us, he regrets. I identified with him. It’s been a week but I’m still stunned. Like many people here. With the ceremony beginning, we disperse a bit. Some remain silent, staring at the photo of Gaspard Ulliel, so full of life. For others, on the contrary, there is a need to speak, to share their pain.
Cinema fans first, like Boris. This programmer is able to recite the interviews of his idol, “a French James Dean” whose erudition and talent he admired. “He had this beautiful formula which consisted in saying that it was not necessary only to play but to take the envelope of the character. I find it magnificent, and it shows that he was a great actor.
All here end up evoking her beautiful face, and especially her magnetic, hypnotizing gaze. “It gave him something very human, we saw a loved one there”, verbalizes Corinne, who shares very light blue eyes with him. The impression of having lost a son, a kid for the older ones, a friend for the younger ones.
Mixed applause
“In fact, that’s what is most shocking: to think that there is a 37-year-old in this coffin, sums up Yann, a Parisian who came to pay homage to him with his sister. This guy is the youth, this is the future. It is he who must bury us, not the other way around. Observation shared by Roselyne, not very aware of her filmography. But this retired Parisian had to pay tribute to him. “It’s as if through him, we paid homage to all these young people mown down by a stupid accident. Frankly, dying on a blue run is bad luck.
And to evoke the son of the actor, only six years old. And to repeat a sentence that we have heard dozens of times over the past week: “We are a small thing anyway.” Boris, the programmer wants to keep a positive image to absorb his pain. That of Ulliel’s son precisely, filmed by his mother going down a ski slope: “I don’t know why but it made me feel good, it was a bit of a metaphor for life going on.”
The ceremony ends, the church empties and the onlookers return. Silence too. The cold is felt more than ever as the funeral procession prepares to leave. In the last applause, we no longer distinguish those of passers-by from those of celebrities.