C'est Pour la Vie ou Pour un Moment? by Nadine Trintignant

C'est Pour la Vie ou Pour un Moment? by Nadine Trintignant

is a beautiful, wonderful, sensual account on her existence close to the beloved actor Jean-Louis. This book is published by Bouquins Memoires.

Nadine, very well introduced in the world of cinema has always worked in the field with big personalities. She became good friend with Jacques Prevert: Jean-Paul Belmondo, remembers, was a funny and sunny man: Alain Delon beautiful.

What attracted the most the mind of Nadine, avid reader, was also the talent, so she tried to choose directors in grade of inspiring her. 

Her biggest love has been the one for Jean-Louis. A sensual, beautiful love, of two souls and bodies who had decided to spend some of their existence together. The title of this book says all.

The first times were incredibly intense: Nadine after a while became pregnant, although she decided for an abortion because her stability at work wasn't great and Jean-Louis had still to build his own career. 

The second time she kept the baby: that baby would have been Marie born in 1962. 

Jean-Louis worked a lot in Italy.The first time he afforded to Rome was for filming with Dino Risi and Vittorio Gassman. Nadine and Jean-Louis were both in love for Rome. Nadine tells that they had an apartment close to Trinità dei Monti: a spectacular view. She remembers the galant words of Dino Risi, and her affection in general for a warm city like the italian capital is.

The problem between Nadine and the husband began when Jean-Louis started to cheating her a first time. Nadine and Jean-Louis had spoken of this eventuality: in case, the partner had to confess to the other one the sin. And Jean-Louis confessed, although, he said, it was just a story of...being a man. Women, to his point of view, were different. Nadine appeared furious. Women can cheat like men: she had men close to her interested but she strongly refused to do that.

If Nadine was loyal with Jean-Louis, Jean Louis, when possible continued to betray her, although he also sent her wonderful, sensual love-letters, of a love that appeared so real, felt, strong, endless, in grade of absorbing completely his mind. 

After a while, the couple had another daughter, Pauline. Pauline was sweet, and tender and she asked for constant attention, writes Nadine. Jean-Louis was filming again to Rome and they had picked up a wonderful apartment close to Trinità dei Monti: again. She couldn't ask for anything else. Happiness was real. Then one day, the horror: a terrible fact dilaniated the couple and Marie. Pauline died abruptly at just nine months. They rushed to the hospital but doctors couldn't be helpful for the baby. 

Nadine writes that once a child dies a part of the existence of a person is gone forever, because life become senseless. 

Nadine added also that she hasn't returned anymore in that apartment in Rome because memories of what happened have been too painful.

The couple thought also of adopting a child although later there was the arrival of a third baby, this one a male, Vincent, born in 1973 and the joy of this mother!

With the time, although Nadine could not physically resist to the passion that she felt for Jean-Louis, once she discovered that again and again the husband cheated her, decided of accepting the court of Alain Corneau.

They became lovers: Nadine continued to love, in a very different ways these two men before asking for the separation. The situation that caused the event was a letter read for casualty written by her husband to her but not sent.

Nadine decided to re-start a different existence. Life, after all was good, more than good. Jean-Louis appeared like an important memory, while the rest of her children were giving her joy and happiness.

Then, one day, in Vilnius, it was 2003, Nadine and Jean-Louis's world turned again upside down. Again  because of one of their children. Marie was brought to the hospital in very bad condition. 

When Nadine re-met the ex-husband, she understood something: they were two people who didn't have anything in common anymore, children apart.

Nadine searches for these two children gone too son, continuously. They are in her heart, they don't never abandon her and her thoughts are constantly for them. Her big consolation is Vincent: with his companion he has had Tomer, a wonderful kid, similar to the first Jean-Louis she fell in love with, characterially.

And Jean-Louis?

He recently fell sick with cancer and previously his body was destroyed by diabetes. When he discovered to be sick, he told that his existence would have continued as if still healthy. Now, admits that being so sick has been a choice. The meeting with him has been touching. The fear of dying, sufferances experienced and that children gone too soon, before their parents...

Read this book if you search for an inspiring reading, plenty of sincerity; if you like the star-system but you don't search for that news, but for real people, living the torments of an existence. Nadine opens her heart to the reader and she does it with tenderness, humanity and as a femme first of all, a word that in french means the globality of a woman: mother, lover, wife, maitresse, girlfriend.

The cover is absolutely fabulous. I love the complicity in the eyes of Nadine, and the sweetness used by Jean-Louis with her wife.

Highly recommended book.

I thank Bouquins for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Wikipedia pictures.