Black Fate: The Story of Rock Singer Bertrand Cante

On July 27, 2003, in a hotel room in Vilnius, rock singer Bertrand Cante stabbed his partner, actress Marie Trintignant, to death. Seven years later, the singer's wife and mother of his two children, Kristina Rady, committed suicide in their home in Bordeaux. Fifteen years after the first drama, and after serving a four-year prison sentence, the singer is demanding what he sees as his right to go on stage while many are demanding that he refrain from doing so, holding demonstrations and opening petitions.

Bertrand Cante, the star of the successful rock band Black Passion (1980-2010), who beat his actress partner Marie Trintignant to death fifteen years ago, is back in the headlines. Crowds of protesters greet him as he arrives at the concert halls where he is scheduled to perform, waving signs and shouting “murderer.” The protesters, including many feminists, as well as family members of the late Marie Trintignant, see Cante’s decision to return to the spotlight as inappropriate. For his part, he claims that he has served his sentence, paid his debt to society, and now has every right to integrate into it.

One of the successes of Black Passion, Aux Sombres Héros de l'amer

The tour that Cante is currently conducting in about thirty cities in France is called Amor Petit, the love of fate, in Latin, like the name of the singer's first solo album (December 2017). Accept your fate, be done with it, a phrase made famous by the writings of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. And accepting fate for Cante means continuing his activity as a musician and singer, with all that this entails, without any restrictions.

In the album's flagship song, Amor Patti, Canta laments his fate as a victim attacked from all sides and cries out for his right to write and sing, in shadow and light. His redemption lies in his work, and like a flamenco dancer soaring toward the sun and abolishing the law of gravity, like Apollo leaping into the sky, he, the sublime artist, will continue to undo the disaster, to write and sing, to enchant the world with the fire of his poetry, to live life as a breath of opportunity, to despise the miserable, stinking slaves who fire at him with recitative accusations. The song Amor Patti dramatizes an internal monologue, a conflict between the voice calling upon the artist to surrender and flee and the voice calling upon him to continue and fulfill his full destiny. And in this internal war, the other voice is the victor.

Say Patty:

Life as a field of unlimited possibilities, full of victories? Kanté's fate now seems less bleak than that of two important women in his life who lost their own lives. However, every prominent public appearance, artistic or media, by Kanté, such as his return to the world of discography in 2013 with the new band Detroit or an interview he gave to the cultural magazine Les Inrockuptibles in which he recounted in detail what he had been through since the drama in Vilnius ( 1 ), provokes a wave of piercing protests.

The one who killed a woman must remain behind the scenes, the protesters declare. They do not question Kanté’s right to continue his life and pursue professional activities, but they demand that he maintain a low profile. Eight days after the publication of the article entitled “Kante in His Name” in the aforementioned rock magazine, the women’s magazine Elle came out with an article entitled “In the Name of Marie” (note the defiant similarity of the headlines) to protest against the unworthy advertisement for a singer who killed a woman and to honor the memory of the beloved actress whose face has become a symbol for all victims of male violence ( 2 ).

Returning to the tragic affair that shocked France fifteen years ago and continues to stir up controversy.

Fatal meeting

Bertrand Cante, founder of the leading rock band in France in the 1980s and 1990s, Noir Désir, in Hebrew, Black Desire, met Marie Trintignant when she came to talk to him about a role she was going to play in a film by her then-partner, director Samuel Banistret. Marie had been cast as a woman who steps into Janis Joplin's shoes in the film Janis and John and wanted to talk to the famous rock singer about it.

She was friends with Cante's sister, Anne, and she was happy to introduce her brother to her. The first meeting took place on July 3, 2002, after a Noir Désir concert at the old theater of Vaison-la-Romaine. It was the first scene in a plot full of twists and turns that led to a bitter end.

After the concert, Anne took Marie behind the screen to introduce her to her brother. Love was ignited. According to Anne, Marie blessed her for presenting her with the great love she had been waiting for until now and which she had finally won, in the middle of her life. Marie had no idea that the blessing would turn into a curse.

Kanta had been married for nine years to a Hungarian cultural figure, a former journalist and TV presenter, Kristina Rady, who was also an organizer of cultural events. It was under these circumstances that she met Kanta when he came to Budapest with his band to participate in a music festival in 1993. Kanta left his then-girlfriend and married Kristina Rady. If she had stayed in her country, she might very well have become Minister of Culture. But Kristina Rady followed love and settled with Kanta in France. The couple had a son and at the time of meeting Marie Trintignant, Kristina Rady was pregnant with her second child. The family lived in Bordeaux.

Marie Trintignant was a free-spirited and opinionated woman, a successful actress, a devoted mother of four sons from four fathers. She had been married for eight years to Samuel Banistret, an actor, director and writer, the father of her fourth son. The extended family lived in Marie's home, a spacious loft, open to the garden, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris.

The relationship with Samuel Banashtryt turned over the years into a courageous friendship full of tenderness and gentleness but devoid of excitement and storms. Marie was looking for a new love. Kanta had some pangs of conscience about his wife, who was heavily pregnant when he fell in love with another, but it was she herself who asked him, in the end, to leave the house. Kristina did not stand in the way of the lovers. Samuel, for his part, was forced to leave the loft where he lived with Marie, at her request, to make room for Kanta.

Marie Trintignant's roles in film, television and theatre

The death of Marie Trintignant

About a year later, Kanta accompanied his partner Marie when she traveled to Vilnius, Lithuania, to play the role of the writer Colette in a television film, Colette, a Free Woman, directed by her mother, Nadine Tarantini.

On a dramatic evening when they were both under the influence of alcohol, a fight broke out. Kanté’s jealousy was ignited by a text message Marie received from Samuel Bansherit, which he signed with the words “Thank you very much, my little Janice,” a reference to her role in his film. Kanté could not stand Marie and Samuel’s close relationship, especially since he was a stranger to the world of cinema that they both shared. Nineteen hard punches, one after the other, four of them to the head, aggravated by the attacker’s rings, caused Marie a concussion and plunged her into a coma. Kanté laid her on the bed and wrapped a damp towel around her forehead.

He would later claim in his defense that he thought she was in a deep sleep and that he was not ready to wake her. It was not until the morning, six hours after the altercation, that Marie's brother called the local hospital, where she underwent two operations. On July 31, she was transferred for another operation at a clinic in Neuilly, near Paris . On August 1, 2003, after five days in a coma, Marie Trintignant, who was 41 years old at the time, died.

The drama in Lithuania:

The trial of Bertrand Cante

The trial was held in Vilnius. On March 29, 2004, Kanta was sentenced to eight years in prison for assault resulting in death. Experts say that if he had been tried in France, the sentence would have been harsher. The testimony of his wife, Kristina Rady, who swore that he had never been violent towards her and always preferred to resolve problems through dialogue, contributed greatly to the lenient sentence.

In 2007, after four years in prison, Kanté was released from prison near Toulouse for good behavior and returned to live in Bordeaux with his wife and children.

The suicide of Christina Rady

Eight years ago, Bertrand Cante and Kristina Rady's son, Milo, then 12, found his mother's body in their home in Bordeaux. On January 10, 2010, Kristina Rady committed suicide by hanging. Cante was sleeping in another room under the same roof at the time. The letter she left explaining her suicide has been kept confidential to protect the family's privacy. Excerpts from it were, however, recently published by Cante's lawyer, Antonin Levy, after lawyer Yael Malul, president of a feminist organization, filed a lawsuit against his client, alleging that his mental and physical abuse of his wife Kristina led to her suicide.

Although Attorney Yael Malul's two previous lawsuits against Kanta were dismissed, the current one has led to the reopening of a case and the matter being reinvestigated. Attorney Yael Malul has been frequently interviewed on television in recent days to explain her position and actions, while Attorney Antonen Levy, Brenner-Henri's son, has been eloquently and passionately defending his client Kanta.

What drove the talented and impressive 41-year-old woman, Kristina Rady, who spoke eight languages, translated literary works, and previously served as the cultural director of the Hungarian Institute in Paris, to take this step from which there is no turning back?

Two journalists, who wrote a book about the affair ( 3 ), revealed a telephone monologue from Kristina on her parents' answering machine in Budapest in which she called for help and said that she could no longer bear Kanta's madness. Kristina Rady had an affair with another partner but always returned to Kanta.

On the other hand, she constantly feared that if Kanta discovered that she was in a relationship with another man, her fate would be the same as Marie's. In the message she left on her parents' answering machine, she goes on to describe a mask of torment from ongoing physical and mental abuse by her husband and raises the possibility of finding refuge in Hungary with her daughter Alice. This is the picture of the situation that emerges from the book.

An investigation published late last year in the newspaper Le Point ( 4 ) stated that Cristina Raddi asked the members of the band Noir Désir, which later disbanded, to hide the fact that Cante was violent towards women, in order to protect their children. Cante also beat his wife Cristina and was violent towards previous girlfriends, the investigation says, citing the words of one of the members of Noir Désir, who requested anonymity.

Various testimonies describe Bertrand Cante in the investigation as a narcissistic pervert who imposed authority and whose charismatic personality was difficult to resist. Cante's lawyer denies everything written in the article, which he says is nothing more than a tract of lies. All former members of Noir Désir also deny having said the things quoted in the article and attributed to one of them.

The life and death of Kristina Rady

Marie Trintignant (1962-2003) lost her life at the age of 41. Christina Raddi (1968-2010) chose suicide when she reached the same age. A grisly coincidence or more? We will probably never know.

Law and morality conflict

Bertrand Cante began a tour of France in early March of this year, 2018, and planned to appear at festivals this summer. Tickets are sold out, the halls are fairly full, but crowds of protesters make sure to line up before each concert to express their protest against the singer's appearance on stage. Various petitions have been opened against this or that concert. A petition by a feminist organization defending women's rights in Rouen, for example, states that Cante, who killed a woman, denies his guilt, turns a blind eye, and sees himself as a victim ( 5 ).

Marie Trintignant's family and many friends are also expressing their anger at Cante's behavior, who has chosen to continue performing in front of his fans. Nadine Trintignant is shocked by any media exposure of the man who killed her daughter ( 6 ). If Cante had been sentenced to twenty years in prison, says the bereaved mother, Cristina Raddi would be alive today and her children would not have lost their mother. Such a person should not be allowed to perform in front of an audience and receive applause and admiration, Nadine Trintignant continues. As for the discreet Jean-Louis Trintignant, his daughter's death has ruined his life.

Samuel Banshatrit also agrees with Nadine Tarentin in saying that Bertrand Cante killed his wife and the mother of his child. The one who killed Marie caused the pain and tears of bereaved parents and four orphans and pushed his wife to suicide, Banshatrit continues ( 7 ).

Fans of Cante's poetry, who separate the artist from his personality, claim, however, that they have the right to go to his concerts. Legally, Cante has the right to perform. In light of the recent public outcry, the singer has decided to forgo participating in the subsidized summer festivals, but not private performances in halls. However, several of his performances have already been canceled due to pressure on their organizers, while other performances are taking place. For example, two of the singer's concerts at the end of May at the Olympia Hall were canceled due to fears of disturbances and riots, while his performance at the Zenith Hall in early June went ahead despite the protests.

This case is a typical example of the clash of law and morality. Everyone involved, whether directly or indirectly, has their own opinion on the right or wrong of the singer, who killed his partner, to speak publicly, promote his albums, go on stage and appear in the spotlight.