Laurent Boutonnat

Laurent Pierre Marie Boutonnat (born 14 June 1961 in Paris) is a French composer and film and music video director, best known as the songwriting partner of Mylène Farmer and the director of moody, provocative and literature-inspired music videos.

Laurent Boutonnat directed his first film, Ballade de la Féconductrice, at the age of 17, while the film itself is rated 18. It would later be screened off competition at the Festival de Cannes. The movie contains multiple graphic elements that would characterize Boutonnat's provocative style.

In 1984, having composed a song called "Maman a tort" with Jérôme Dahan for which they needed a female singer, they started auditioning, and Mylène Farmer, a young student in acting, eventually showed up. Boutonnat and Farmer then started an artistic collaboration which goes on to this day. While Farmer had limited songwriting input on her first album, she thereafter took the habit of writing all the lyrics while Boutonnat composes the music and arranges it.

Boutonnat also took up Farmer's visual image. He started directing long, big-budget, literature-inspired music videos that took more the shape of short films. His style was widely recognized, especially thanks to the videos "Libertine" and "Pourvu qu'elles soient douces" in which the action takes place during the eighteenth century. Other videos like those of "Ainsi soit je..." were appreciated for their simplicity and their visual language. Whether they were big productions or simple projects, all of Boutonnat's videos that he created during that time contained many references to literature and art, like Farmer in her lyrics. Boutonnat is sometimes considered to have revolutionized French music videos, including art and cinematic imagery in them and therefore not limiting them to simple commercial tools.

Boutonnat's videos for Farmer contained many nude and sexual provocative scenes which forced the TV stations to ban them from airplay. In the early 90's, at the end of the promotion of Farmer and Boutonnat's hugely successful album L'Autre..., Farmer decided to start working with different music video directors. Boutonnat remained her songwriting partner. The last video he directed for her at that time was "Beyond My Control", banned from daytime TV airplay for violence and sex.

...
Wikipedia