The Ballad of Patrick Dewaere

A tale of doomed passion, set in the resort town of Biarritz. Téchiné captures Dewaere’s bewitching blend of vulnerability and wounded charisma and gives Deneuve a haunted quality belying her icy exterior. Interviewed after Dewaere’s death, Deneuve revealed that he was one of the few actors whose work ever made her weep on set.

At the intersection of steamy romance and eccentric comedy, Plein Sud features Dewaere as a married professor who drops everything to follow a bombshell to Barcelona. There’s only one problem: outside of sexual chemistry, the couple have nothing in common. 

Progressive in its day and still affecting now, Claude Miller’s debut feature about repression and forbidden yearning stars Patrick Dewaere and Patrick Bouchitey as rival summer-camp counselors in 1960. When the macho Marc (Dewaere) catches the more sensitive Philippe (Bouchitey) in drag one night, he begins to aggressively torment him—but is it out of disgust or desire?

In this chilling take on the cinema of paranoia, Dewaere plays a journalist who discovers he has been manipulated to cover up a French politician’s murder. His quest for truth soon leads to an American corporation with a dirty past.

The third and final collaboration of Dewaere and arch-provocateur Bertrand Blier is the story of a man who becomes romantically involved with his girlfriend’s teenage daughter after her mother’s death. Surprisingly complex and ambiguous, the film is as much about mourning and loss as about transgression, while retaining Blier’s trademark black humor.

Dewaere’s flair for physical comedy shines in his performance as the boxer in Dugowson’s debut film, virtually unknown in the US. A romp through French class and gender relations in the 1970s, co-starring Dewaere’s real-life partner Miou-Miou. 

Dewaere and Dugowson’s second collaboration returns to the social commentary of Lily aime-moi, focusing on unemployment through the tribulations of a man in a series of routine jobs. Dewaere’s descent into madness here culminates with one of the most arresting examples of his no-holds-barred, emotionally raw performance style—which was shot without a stunt man.