Arnaud Binard
Arnaud Binard is an actor, born 1971.
French television has a particular job to fill, the reliable leading man who can carry a returning series for several seasons without wearing out his welcome, and Arnaud Binard has filled it repeatedly. Born in Bordeaux in 1971, he became familiar across the French-speaking world through a run of hit series: Sous le Soleil in the late 1990s, Groupe Flag on France 2, Alice Nevers, le juge est une femme on TF1, then Empreintes criminelles, Cherif and Agathe Koltes. Those are long engagements on channels that need a face to be dependable week after week.
His film work pulls the other way. Gabriel Axel cast him in Leila, and he turned up in two erotic dramas that made more noise than any of the television did: Grande école, adapted from a Jean-Marie Besset play and set in an elite school, and Jean-Claude Brisseau's À l'aventure. Brisseau is not a director anyone signs with for the exposure, which suggests an actor willing to be uncomfortable when the material asks for it.
He produces as well as acts. The credit English-speaking viewers are most likely to have seen is also the smallest: Laurent Grateau in Emily in Paris, a supporting part that puts a long French career in front of an audience that has never watched any of it.
Movies (4)
TV (5)
Where to start with Arnaud Binard
The obvious entry point, Emily in Paris, is also the least representative thing he has done: Laurent Grateau is a supporting turn in a show about somebody else's Paris. Go to the French work for the actual actor.
Grande école is the film that carried his name beyond television, and À l'aventure is the harder, stranger companion piece to it, so watch them in that order or not at all. Maison close is the most ambitious of the series work here and the one that shows what he can do with period material. Alice Nevers, le juge est une femme is the bread-and-butter procedural mode he spent years in, and it is more watchable than that description sounds. ID:A and Manipulation round out the film side, and La Stagiaire and Summer of 36 are for completists.