A history of one photo – Mylene Farmer and Francis Lalanne

To start off the story I want to tell you today, let me offer you a quote from the interview Elsa Trillat gave to the Fanzine Mylène Farmer Magazine in 2004. Photographer, she worked for the weekly Paris Match from 1980 to 1994. She currently works for Prisma Presse

We are in July. Mylène asks me what I do for the holidays: “We rented a house with Laurent (Boutonnat, editor’s note) in the South, at La Garde Freinet, do you want to come? There are plenty of rooms!”. We’ve only really known each other for three weeks! Spending a month together seems a bit early to me. For me, it’s the best way to get angry. I therefore decline the invitation. At the same time, I really want to go there! Mylène insists, telling me that I don’t have to stay the whole month. I have a Niagara feature scheduled in Holland anyway.

But I managed to follow up with a subject on Francis Lalanne at the very beginning of August in Saint Tropez, not far from La Garde Freinet. So I arrive a week after them. I I rented a car at the expense of the magazine because neither Mylène nor Laurent knew how to drive at the time. I also remember giving driving lessons to Mylène during those holidays;

we took I don’t know how many ditches! ET was vacationing with us there. There are also a couple of friends of Mylène and Laurent. Christophe Mourthé and his girlfriend also spend a few days before I arrive. Michel, Mylène’s little brother, has also been there since the beginning. Its funny as only yesterday i have told you a story about photo where Lisa (Michel’s daughter) is a main heroine. If you missed it see it HERE

Besides, I share the room adjoining that of Mylène and Laurent with him. There are bunk beds, I specify. Laurent keeps teasing Michel about it, telling him that it would be in his interest to change his sheets every morning. Poor guy, he’s about seventeen.

So I wrap up my report with Lalanne quickly to join Mylène, Laurent and the whole clique. But when Francis learns that I live with Mylène Farmer, he absolutely wants to come. I think he was fascinated by her character – like so many others.

With Mylène’s permission, I invite her to accompany me home to take some pictures in the orchard. Mylène assists me. In fact, it distracts me more than anything else. She likes to play the directors in space completely lit: “Francis, take a peach and pretend that you made love to it”. He is completely at her command. He would have stayed after the photo shoot, but she didn’t invite him.

Anyway, we had fun. I really had a great vacation. Often alone with Mylène, moreover, because Laurent spent most of his time with a friend of his, Gilles Laurent. Mylène was also very happy to tell me: “He was the one who did the voice of Pinocchio in the film with Gina Lollobrigida when he was little!”. The two men were working on the screenplay for what I believe would become Giorgino a few years later. So they spent their days in the office while Mylène and I were lounging by the pool.

Besides, we dropped the swimsuit after two days! I remember we often put the radio by the pool. One morning Déshabillez moi by Juliette Gréco came on and I started to do a little striptease by the pool while Mylène was in a deck chair. We had a good laugh. Mylène did the song a few months later on the album Ainsi soit je…. Before that, she sang it at the Opera for the Fashion Oscars. It is in October 1987. If you know the images, you know that we saw her nipple sticking out at one point. Mylène was sick of hearing it!

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Apparently Mylene and Francis has already met prior to the summer vacation of 1987. In fact we have a pleasure seeing a few lovely pictures of them together attending a play “Kean” in February of the same year 1987. The event took place in Theater Marigny, Paris. There were many celebrities present including of course a play director – Robert Hossein (my favorite Jeoffrey de Peyrac), leading actor Jean-Paul Belmondo and as we now clearly see Mylene accompanied by Francis Lalanne .

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Perhaps, they spent a few hours together and got to know each other a little. It explains Mylene playfulness around him or she might just has been herself. 🙂 The flirty and light hearted Mylene we don’t have a pleasurer to see too often. I find that side of her super appealing, don’t you? It is so nice to know that a woman with such talent and dedication to her craft can also have many layers and sides to her personality. I am glad I came across this interview! Like grains of golden sand I keep collecting small fractions and glimpses of real facts about Mylene from people who knew her and spent time with her outside of the spotlight and all the craziness of the showbiz.

Besides being enormously lucky, they are also crucial for us fans. And in my turn I will do my very best to deliver you wonderful stories about our beloved Mylene which are gossip free, inspiring and based solely on facts! Comment below and let me know what else would you like to learn about Mylene.

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Francis Lalanne was born on August 8, 1958 in Bayonne. He is the eldest of three brothers and grew up with a United Nations civil servant father. According to the assignments of his father, he will spend part of his adolescence in Uruguay, then the whole family returns to settle in Marseille.

Attracted by music, he learned the piano and the guitar and took theater lessons at the Conservatoire de Marseille.

La maison du bonheur, a single from the album, met with immense success and launched the career of Francis Lalanne .

With his brothers, he creates a group: Bibi-Folk , and they perform in faculties, MJCs and high schools . After a baccalaureate with honors, he enrolled in the university of letters at the Sorbonne. He continues to perform with his guitar in prisons and the metro. He approaches record companies, but receives refusal after refusal, then he finally manages to record his first opus Rentre chez toi (1979).

From then on, he went on tours and records. All his albums do not meet the same success, victims of his exalted and rebellious style. Multidisciplinary, Francis Lalanne launched himself into the cinema by producing Le Passage (1986), a film directed by his brother and starred Alain Delon. The feature film did not meet with success, but the title song We will meet again , written and sung by Francis Lalanne, was a hit .

The following year he went on stage in Don Juan, which sold out. In 1988, he returned to singing and released an all-Spanish album De Corazon , which was acclaimed by audiences and critics alike.

While leading a career as a singer, he wrote several books and continued to play in the theater, where he met with some success. But following a few outbursts on television sets, his record sales fell. It is reality TV that saves him and allows him to return to the front of the stage with the program 60 days 60 nights , broadcast on Canal +. The public discovers it in their daily life. This renewed popularity allows him to release new albums: Reptile (2005), Open his heart (2009), Poets (2013), À Léo (2014).

In 2007, a new change of course: he entered politics and ran for the legislative elections in Strasbourg under the label of the Independent Ecologist Movement. He was eliminated in the first round, but did not give up politics: he then ran for the municipal elections of Montauban, and later in the European elections. All without success.

On the heart side, Francis Lalanne lived a long history with Stella. Together they have four children: Éa, born in 1993, Hélia, born in 1994, Séléna, born in 1996 and Neo Kahn, born in June 2007. The couple separated in 2008. Later, he met Alice Poussin, a Belgian cellist. Together, they have a daughter, Léiah, born in November 2019.

We don’t know if Mylene and Francis remained friends but one little connection is for sure: he has also recorded the song called “Larmes” and he has fallen in love with Alice 🙂

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