Another death in Gay Paris that I was not aware of...

This is a post made a year TOO LATE...
Just as with the classy Claude Jade who passed away in December of 2006, I was not aware that the astonishing Anicée Alvina had passed away in November of that same year.
And both were reaped by the same monster - cancer.
Anicée was only 53 - and she appeared to be eternally young due, in part, to her timeless films made early in her career; 'Deux enfants qui s'aiment' and 'Paul et Michelle' particularly (the second being a sequel to the first; this before the trend to make sequels was anywhere near to becoming a real, truly consistent trend...)

As many have said about her before, she was sort of a living symbol for the "cinéma libertin des années 1970" - the libertinous French films of that decade... That is quite an honor for someone so young when the competition for that dubious title was the likes of Sylvia Kristel and Brigitte Bardot herself - both in their prime.
The reason for that was truly just a few films she made, all in a row, in a short timespan right from the onset of her career. There were the first two titles mentioned above. And then there were the truly daring ones...
Films such as 'Isabelle Devant Le Désir' and also the much controversial 'Le Rempart des Béguines' where she was paired up with classic film and stage actress Nicole Courcel in a most unusual and unpredictable way, career-pattern wise (unless one had previously read the novel of the same name; absolutely no one could have predicted such a role for the refined Nicole Courcel - certainly not the role she was attributed there, as the seductress of a teenaged girl. And the role given to the nubile Anicée Alvina was a surprise as well.)

But this is not a movie career analysis - as much as it is an eulogy.
The films mentioned above and below shall be analyzed elsewhere...

Born Anicée Shahmanesh on the 28th of January 1953, she was of Iranian descent via her father and French through her mother. The mix contributed to make her, in time, French cinema's touch of the exotic - and erotic. She was married in 1984 and was buried last year in the same locality: Boncourt, which is to be found somewhere in Eure et Loire. She did pass away in Paris, however...

Perhaps Paris was not worthy of keeping her body in inhumation now - considering the way Parisians treated her body as a consummable in print, for so long...

Whenever a French director needed a refreshing vision of all that youth could be, such as René Richon did for his 1978 film 'La Barricade du Point du Jour', they summoned Anicée Alvina - the most promising starlet of "le nouveau cinéma français" from her very start in 1969 throughout the 1970s.

Throughout that period, these directors and casting agents required two things, primarily, from Anicée: for her to be cute and for her to disrobe.

Flash-forward to now, however:

2006 was a murderous year indeed - and I am not alone with this opinion as evidenced by this comment left elsewhere:

De PM Jarriq, le 26 novembre 2006 à 12:39
Pour continuer dans les nouvelles réjouissantes de cette fin d'année meurtrière, j'apprends le décès de Anicée Alvina, jeune première des années 70, remarquée dans ce film de Blain (Un Second Souffle), et dans Le Rempart des Béguines.

Blain's film and le Rempart - two of the most exploitive films done with Anicée - or committed at her expense as blatant exploitation of her exotic looks and unique qualities... She was the voluptuous object of desire du jour - in spite of her intrinsic innocence. For Anicée had that particularity about her, see, that which made it clear (as clear as logically could be) that she was unquestionably precocious and sensuous - yet retained the aura of a virginal nymph at the same time (as it is plainly evident below.) Her purity outshone any of the sexually suggestive things she did on screen - and, much akin to a young Romy Schneider, it would have to be the toll of years and years of disappointments, life itself hence, that would finally take away that aura of purity - replacing it with the allure of a proud woman whose dreams were not fulfilled, as it was the case for both herself and Romy, as well...



Anicée had left the seventh art in the early 1980s (most probably out of deep lassitude and dillusionment) to try and achieve her lifelong dream to sing. She released three singles: "Image à définir" (1982), "Maman, je ne veux plus aller à l’école" (1983) and "Si tu m’aimais encore" (1986). She was met with very mixed reviews and a lukewarm response from critics and audiences alike - unlike a certain Carla Bruni many years later; Carla, who had done as much nudity as Anicée had (but as a model, not an actress) to eventually turn around and become a chanteuse overnight - and she was actually embraced as such.
Anicée, one of the first to do that, was clearly not.

It is perplexing to note the obvious irony that she was born in 1953 - and was destined to remain on this Earth only 53 years as well.
She spent most of her career years as a recluse, in near-obscurity, not making films or much of anything else, in-between exploitive flicks that is. Who could blame her - she knew that the only roles French film directors would offer her (especially the French ones - although Lewis Gilbert is guilty too) were roles that would require her to be a sexpot, a seductress of some kind, a debauched woman - and she knew that these directors would want her primarily to get her to shed her clothing once again... Even as she grew older, roles of substance would not come her way. No one ever saw in her more than that - more than a pretty woman, a pretty naked body, an object of desire. Bref, plus qu'une poupée.
I do believe she has been embraced now by One Who Sees beyond mere corporeal shells - One Who embraced the beautiful person that Anicée was on the inside.
And Has Seen her true value, hence, when so few here saw it.


R.I.P.