Rendez-vous (1985 film)

Rendez-vous
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	André Téchiné
Produced by	Alain Terzain
Written by	André Téchiné Olivier Assayas
Starring	Juliette Binoche Lambert Wilson Jean-Louis Trintignant
Music by	Philippe Sarde
Cinematography	Renato Berta
Distributed by	T-Films
Release date	1985
Running time	83 minutes
Country	France
Language	French
Box office	$5.8 million

Rendez-vous is a 1985 French drama film directed by André Téchiné. The film stars Juliette Binoche, Lambert Wilson, Wadeck Stanczak and Jean-Louis Trintignant. Rendez-vous premiered at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival where it won the award for Best Director. The film had a total of 766,811 admissions in France.

Nina is a young headstrong woman who has traveled to Paris from her provincial home in Toulouse searching immediate success as an actress. Tired of one-night stands and sharing quarters with others, she sets out to find her own apartment, stopping in to a realtor’s office. There, she meets Paulot, a timid real estate clerk, who is immediately smitten by her. She invites him to see her perform in the small role she has as a maid in a boulevard comedy. After the play, Nina takes Paulot for dinner with her current boyfriend Fred, but the couple has a major row, breaking off their relationship. Paulot invites Nina to stay at his apartment while she finds her own place, but his roommate, Quentin, refuses to let her stay. They have to settle for a hotel room for the night. In their long walk through the city, she tells Paulot that she has slept with nearly every man she has encountered. She complains to him that she is tired of being used solely for easy sex and asks him to leave her alone.

Quentin, however, has followed them to the hotel: he forces his attentions on Nina. Nina and Quentin then begin an intense and violent liaison. An actor who performs in a live sex show version of Romeo and Juliet, Quentin is unpredictable and provocative. Nina bounces between the two vastly different men: the gentle Paulot and the dangerous and intense Quentin. Nina has an approach/avoidance conflict with Quentin, all the while fending off offers by Paulot to take care of her. When he finds that she has slept with Quentin, Paulot starts to change his calm manners towards Nina, but he does not lose his craving for her.

Quentin is run over and killed by a car, in what it seems to be a suicide. The only other person attending his funeral is the elderly theater director, Scrutzler, who eventually explains that in London he had cast Quentin as Romeo, but he had withdrawn after he survived a suicide pact with Scrutzler’s daughter, with whom he had a passionate love affair.