La belle verte

Born in 1947 in Paris to stage director Jean-Marie Serreau and writer Genevieve Serreau, Coline grew up as a young girl surrounded by artists.

After high school, she decided to follow her parents’ lead and embraced an artistic life and career. While studying literature and classic and modern dance, she joined the Conservatoire de Musique and began taking trapeze lessons at Annie Fratellini’s Circus School. On her way to becoming an accomplished artist, she set her sight on drama and began to study with Andreas Voutsinas (also the teacher of Jean Reno). After l’Ecole de la rue Blanche, she joined the Comédie-Française", appearing for the first time on stage in 1970. She would later appear on stage in Café de la Gare by the side of Romain Bouteille, Coluche and Patrick Dewaere.

After revealing her talent in a wide range of productions, including productions in Cafés Theatres and repertoire classics (especially Shakespeare’s Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It in the Avignon Drama Festival in 1976) she started writing and finished her first screenplay in 1973 (On s’est trompé d’histoire d’amour based on the book by Jean-Louis Bertucelli). Two years later, she directed her first short for television – Le rende-vous, which was followed by the documentary Mais qu’est-ce qu’elles veulent. Mais qu’est-ce qu’elles veulent screened in competition at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival and her reputation as a feminist artist began to take shape. That same year, she directed her first fiction feature, Pourquoi pas! (Why not?). In 1979, she focused on TV (Grand-mére de l’Islam) and a live performance of Sophocle’s Oedipe Roi for the RAI.

After the unnoticed Qu’est-ce qu’on attend pour être heureux?, in 1982, she encounterd worldwide success with Trois hommes et un couffin (1985) in which three men are confronted with girl power.

In 1989, she embraced another struggle: interracial tolerance through the love story of a CEO and a black cleaning lady in Romuald et Juliette. This was followed by, La crise, (and success once again) thanks to its harsh, yet humorous depiction of a generation confronted with unemployment, divorce and family crisis.

In her following movie, La belle verte, she directed herself playing the part of an extraterrestrial that discovers a plant ravaged by the excess waste left by the consumption of society. While audiences failed to show much interest in this environmental tale, Coline Serreau met success again five years later with Chaos. Nominated in six different categories at the 2001 César Awards, the ferocious Chaos is a story denouncing society’s lack of courage. —Theatre School at DePaul University