http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hn6Qxl...X70e9-f7HgtfoCg



sillage

How awful. Sounds like he's had a hard time of it. RIP.

Yes, I was very sorry to hear about this. I'm glad it wasn't a suicide or drug overdose at least. That kid has had a hard time of it.

What a sad waste, what a tragic loss......for his father and mother most of all.....

This is dedicated to him in one my most favourite films, Tous les Matins du Monde in which he starred:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoXrMOsnRVo

Oh yes, that was a wonderful movie! I loved it too. I feel very badly for his parents.

TOUS LES MATINS DU MONDE.... Yes, I was trying to think of the name of this film that I'd seen him in, back in the day.


At the time of the film's release, Gerard (Dad) had made a press release-- I'll never forget-- stating something to the effect of, "My son has a girlfriend and a boyfriend. Yes, he is bisexual, but aren't we all? And you have to thank God for that."


The disease they describe sounds a good bit like the verbiage people use when they wish to dissemble the fact that AIDS was involved (the "bacterial/motorcycle" stuff notwithstanding). Just my 0.02.

He was filming the movie L'enfance d'Icare in Romania (and he died in hospital 3 days after getting pneumonia there, suffering septic choc, which sounds perfectly plausible to me), so he can't have been dying from AIDS and working full-schedule all along.
Also he had founded an organisation Fondation Guillaume-Depardieu in Bougival about victims of hospital infections with over 800000 cases recorded many years before and often appeared on French TV talking about it (it was in the hospital -against which he filed a lawsuit- he had contacted the staphylococous disease on his shattered knee after a motorcycle accident, which led to numerous surgeries, drug courses and as a last resort a self-decided amputation some years later).

He had the same bumby childhood and adolescence that his father had: the major difference is that while the dad had it because he almost couldn't do otherwise growing up in such an environment (remember that infamous interview in which he had the misfortune to use the verb "assister" ~which in French means also "witness" which he meant, apart from "help" which he didn't~ about a rape he saw as a minor and which cost him the Academy Award many years ago?), while the son could theoretically have a pampered life that would act as a cushion yet he was a rebellious spirit and veered into deliquency with convictions on heroin use.

I think this is where the "bisexuality" you referred to above enters the equation because he was at the time of that early movie just finishing with having issues with the law about possession of drugs, minor thefts and prostitution: I believe dad Gerard was trying to explain the son's behaviour in a manner that is perhaps more acceptable...out of love (Being bisexual by choice sounds better than prostitutiong yourself to women and men alike to get your heroin fix...)
Although Guillaume had it rough with his dad and they were trying to find a way of communication on and off for ears, I have to give it to dad Gerard on one thing: how can you teach your own child on something that you yourself are guilty of? What example can you set? And how can you escape the agony of whether it is nature or nurture that the son repeats the errors of the father? It takes superhuman powers to harness all that energy as well.
As he had a little daughter of 8 years old, Guillame was painfully aware of the situation: "I am scared of repetition" he used to say.
Aye, what an entangled situation and it's with a sad heart I am writing the above.


I found thse articles both enlightening and respectful:
Depardieu buries son
Tempsreel
Le Figaro
Paris.evous.fr

How very sad. It's hard enough to break away and become your own person, but it must be doubly hard when your father is so huge. It sounds as though he'd finally begun to manage it and find something of his own, and then to be felled by something like pneumonia ...

Rest in peace.