**8All his films, or almost, have been successful. Yet, it is only this year that the French film director Patrice Leconte has been acknowledged by his peers with "Ridicule", which was awarded the C sar for the best film. It is a success story.***

VEN if he claims not to make films to be H rewarded but to appeal,

Patrice Leconte did not conceal his delight M during the ceremony of

Cesars held in Paris last February. No is he a man to unduly display his emotions. Patrice Leconte smiled broadly and uttered a few pleasant words when Annie Girardot, the chairperson of the festivities, handed him the Cesar for the best French film for "Ridicule". At last, this director who had been foresaken by the Cesars, this "specialist of unconfirmed nominations" as he himself put it. had been acknowledged.

His bad luck started in 1987 with ’Tandem”. He arrived with seven nominations and left with the Cesar for the best poster! Louis Malles film. "Au revoir les enfants" had won all the awards. Two years later, Patrice Leconte was back in the running with "Le marl

de la coiffeuse ", but it was the year of "Trop belle pour toi", one of Bertrand Blier's great successes. In 1990. Jean-Paul Rappeneau's "Cyrano" won all the prizes. Leconte and "Monsieur Hire" had to content themselves with the Cesar for the best sound. That's how it was and Leconte never took it badly and was never bitter. 'The public Is always right and one is quite wrong to consider it as a bunch of idiots. A film which does well is obviously a success."

This is the case with "Ridicule" with which the Cannes Festival opened and which achieved more than two million admissions In France, won the big prize at the Chicago Festival, was nominated for the Golden Globes, was selected to

represent France for the Oscars, was nominated twelve times for the Cesars and is starUng on a promising career in the United States.

"Ridicule" is, first of all, the story of a bet and of love at first sight. When he received the scenario from a completely unknown script-writer, Remi Waterhouse. Patrice Leconte threw a fit. "It turned me right over like a pancake. I immediately phoned the producer forbidding him to make the film without me." However, the story is not his cup of tea. "I made the film of a dunce. At school, in history lessons, 1 had the impression that I was being told stories about Martians. It is not because 1 was going to make a film about life at Louis

XVTs court that I was going to start frequenting the Bibliotheque Nationale. I wasn't going to do research to check if the script-writer had done his work correctly!" Yet, behind the casualness and ease of the film director, there is a meticulous man who had a taste for detail and a passion for things well done. He is simply reluctant to give an image of himself as an industrious man.

He loves being overburdened with work. To the past, he prefers the present which he lives as a gift. He does not seek society life and only goes to Cannes or to the Cesars presentation ceremony if he has a film in the competition. On such occasions, he gets out his dinner Jacket which he bought ten years earlier at the time of Tandem".

Patrice Leconte, who has been 49 years old since November, follows his path, zigzaglng on different registers. He is very fond of comic strips and made his first film "Les veces etaient fermes de 1'interieur" based on a Gotlib comic,

with Jean Rochefort and Coluche who was making his debut. It was a complete flop. "This failure stopped me from in-

toxicating myself with success later on." Two years later, he returned with " Les bronzes". It was a triumph which he first of all attributes to the troupe of Le Splendid. "It was the producer Christian Flechner who made me break out of my good habit of only making one comedy film a year, by asking me to make an action film, "Les specialistes" with Gerard Lanvin and Bernard Giraudeau. It was a smash hit which made me want to do very different things. Each film ought to be a prototype. You can't do the same thing twice. The public is quite astute and realizes if you try to serve up the same soup reheated."

Today. Patrice Leconte is getting ready to start shooting another film written for the producer Christian Flechner. "I can't say anything about it. I have promised." He simply agrees to say that the film will bring together Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Vanessa Paradis. ■