“Your death surprised us all, it was inflicted on us, without it even having any meaning, and an ocean of revolts then engulfed us”. Ex-girlfriend of Gaspard Ulliel and mother of his son Orso, Gaëlle Pietri chose to write a posthumous letter to say a final goodbye to the actor, who died in January 2022 after a skiing accident. Time to say goodbye, published by Grasset at the end of April, will not satisfy the curiosity of readers who would hope to know details of the private life of Gaspard Ulliel, “Gasp” or “Gaspouille” for those close to him. With modesty and poetry, Gaëlle Pietri recounts an impossible mourning, confiscated by the crowd and the media hype, and tries to paint the portrait of this mysterious and discreet being. Which Gaspard do we meet in this short text crossed by the words of Rainer Maria Rilke, Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates or Delphine Horvilleur?
Gaëlle Pietri lays down her thoughts, like a patchwork of memories, questions and literary references. In a constant back and forth between the day of the ceremony in Saint-Eustache and the history of their relationship, she questions her place in this mourning, “the validity of her suffering and the legitimacy of her word”. The model with the sensitive pen retraces her meeting with the actor. Passing through Paris – at that time, she was living in New York – she was invited to see him play at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, in a play directed by Michel Fau.
Gaspard joins his table in a restaurant after the performance. They have a mutual friend. Glasses clash, keys get lost… Gaspard is waiting for her in front of her house on his motorbike. Gaëlle Pietri tells this love story in small touches, with restraint. And a few years later, “in a burst of banality”, they decide to have a child. Orso. To whom she dedicates this letter, to keep the memory of her father alive. When Gaspard died, he had just celebrated his sixth birthday.
“Your favorite game: lead everyone on a boat”
Subscriber to Dramatic Roles –Saint Laurent, Just the end of the world, Sibyl-, the actor is nevertheless very funny. We don’t know enough. “Your favorite game: lead everyone in a boat. Invent incredible or insignificant stories to push others to their limits, to play tricks on them, to find out how far you could go in lying, in gambling, ”she writes. Because Gaspard was not always this young first of the French cinema with the perfect physique. He didn’t know anything about his strengths until his late teens.
Gringalet, laughing … His dimple born of a scar drew a falsely ironic look on his face. As a child, he had a swaying gait that made him look a bit clumsy. Besides, he was left-handed, like his son, says the author. It is perhaps because of this first part of life that he knew how to remain humble, always in the shadow of the spotlight, protecting his private life at all costs.
“You can’t fight legends”
At the mention of Gaspard, always the same adjectives: discreet, elegant and above all mysterious. ” Mystery. It’s the word that comes up the most when we talk about you. Mystery that I have been unable to elucidate during the six years that we have spent together”. He kept a distance, remained reserved. “Despite or because of this force of attraction, there remains this strange feeling of not having really known you. That there has always been another part of you, an upside-down side, an off-screen. That your mind has always been masked by an eclipse. That you remain forever frozen in the unreal”.
The young woman, who struggles to recover from the double mourning (separation and death), revolves around this sunny, modest being, passionate about art and skiing. Cinema is rarely mentioned in this book, except to mention its seriousness and dedication. Only two names are mentioned: his “big brother” Bertrand Bonello and his friend Jérémie Rénier.
We discover the cinephile Gaspard whose long-awaited career as a director had yet to be built. He had undertaken film studies in Saint-Denis to get behind the camera. Life wanted it otherwise. We meet a father in ecstasy who, a few days before his death, landed with a clown under his arm to celebrate his son’s birthday. An elegant man even in the separation, passionate about literature, music, who would have liked to have perfect pitch. A man capable of finding a comic angle in all things, “sort of Buster Keaton” of everyday life. “We can’t fight against legends”, writes Gaëlle Pietri in the last pages of her book. His legend lives on in his filmography. Finally, isn’t it through each of his roles that he revealed himself best?