Marie Trintignant died on August 1, 2003, six days after being beaten by her companion Bertrand Cantat, on the sidelines of a shoot in Lithuania. From an “accident” and “madness” in love according to the singer, to a “homicide” for justice, here is the story of a feminicide which did not yet bear his name.
On the night of July 26 to 27, 2003, the couple returned around 11:30 p.m. to their hotel in Vilnius. An argument breaks out. The insults fuse, the couple grabs. Around 5:30 a.m., the singer of Noir Désir asks Marie Trintignant’s brother to come. “He told me (…) that he had argued with Marie, that he had pushed her and that he had slapped her, that she might have a butter eye black”, will tell Vincent Trintignant in court.
For a long time, he listened to Bertrand Cantat’s “monologue”. “After a while, I asked myself questions. I went back to Marie’s room, even if it meant waking her up”. He raises the towel over his sister’s face: “It was far from being a simple cockade”. At his request, the night watchman calls for help. At 7:16 a.m., hours after the beatings. The 41-year-old actress is operated on to stem a cerebral hemorrhage. Bertrand Cantat, who ingested antidepressants, is also hospitalized. “Almost in a coma”, the police cannot question him.
The next day, the Lithuanian police say that during a violent argument, the singer, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, allegedly hit and pushed the actress who, hitting her head, fell into a coma. She opens an investigation. The actress underwent a second operation on July 29. “Medically, there is nothing more to do,” says neurosurgeon Stéphane Delajoux. “Unfortunately, we arrived much too late”. Bertrand Cantat is placed in police custody.
The Trintignants file a complaint in Paris. At the height of the summer, the case presented as a crime of passion experiences enormous media repercussions. The prosecution opens a judicial investigation for “intentional blows” and “non-assistance to person in danger”. A reconstruction of the facts takes place with Bertrand Cantat. The lawyer of Trintignant, Georges Kiejman excludes the hypothesis of a fall: “his face is too swollen”.
Marie Trintignant is repatriated to Paris on July 31. “It’s been about two days since his brain was clinically dead,” says Doctor Delajoux. In Vilnius, Bertrand Cantat is interrogated. “It’s an accident after a struggle, madness, but it’s not a crime.” His lawyer evokes an “accident on both sides, a tragedy, a human conflict between two people, two artists with a strong temperament”. He demands his release. “It is essential that Marie’s children know that someone who killed their mother is in prison,” retorts Nadine Trintignant, her mother, referring to other women beaten by Bertrand Cantat. The singer refutes, asks for his extradition. He is imprisoned.
In the evening, the neurosurgeon speaks of a “flat encephalogram”: “no more hope”. The next day, the actress died at 10:20 a.m. from cerebral edema. On August 13, the autopsy concludes that the actress received 19 blows, the majority against her head and face. A second expertise confirms the fatal blows.
Both the family and the accused want a trial in France. On August 7, the Lithuanian justice ruled out the extradition of the prisoner before a trial in Vilnius for “intentional homicide”. On August 21, the singer is also indicted by a French judge in Vilnius for “willful violence resulting in death without intention to give it” and “non-assistance to anyone in danger”. “Caught with fury, I slapped Marie hard,” he admits.
At the start of his trial on March 16, 2004, Bertrand Cantat recognized “two round trips” and begged for forgiveness. The defense renounces to plead the “crime of passion”, then less severely punished in Lithuania. He was sentenced to eight years in prison on March 29. “His guilt is indisputable” but he “did not want the consequences” of his actions, say the judges. He was transferred to a prison near Toulouse on September 28. After four and a half years of detention, the singer obtained his conditional release on October 16, 2007. Nadine Trintignant denounced “a negative signal” sent to public opinion in terms of violence against women.
Today, the murder of Marie Trintignant by her companion is considered a feminicide. This was not yet the case in the early 2000s. The press had tended since the beginning of the 20th century to describe marital murders as “a form of excess”, an explanation “linked to a certain conception of love”. , told AFP Giuseppina Sapio, lecturer at the University of Paris 8 and specialist in the media treatment of domestic violence. “Male violence exists at all times, in all countries. And the means to euphemize them as well”, she specifies.
Feminist associations have been denouncing this violence for a long time. But it’s movement
Associations have contributed to publicizing this subject. Including, in France, the collective “Feminicides by companions or ex”, which has been carrying out a daily count since 2016 of women killed by their spouse. About 120 women are victims of marital feminicide each year in France, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior. “The number is scary, it means that there is bound to be someone who looks like us among the victims,” notes Isabelle Steyer, a lawyer specializing in domestic violence for 30 years.
“We now realize that this violence affects all types of women, whereas we previously thought that it concerned the socially most fragile people,” she continues. To improve their care, it pleads for strengthening the training of police officers and specialized magistrates. The government has recently provided for the creation of a “pole specializing in domestic violence” in the French courts.
