Claude Rich is my new favorite French male actor.

I like Claude Rich too, though I haven't seen him in a lead role. He has a nice part in Renoir's Elusive Corporal, which you can probably find on video in NYC.

Incidentally, a box set of all Resnais's films from the 1980s (Mélo, I Want to Go Home, L'amour à mort, La vie est un roman, Mon oncle d'amérique) recently came out in France. All the films save one have English subtitles. I'm hoping to pick that up, especially for Mélo.

(i just saw this film je t'aime je t'aime at the wacky lumiere)

then i had a go on the slide in the lycee playground

Just watched Je t'aime je t'aime, having wanted to see it for ages. Almost a perfect distillation of a late 60s French art film and pretty fantastic. Claude Rich was indeed excellent in it, although I was even more taken with the female lead, Olga Georges-Picot. Googling her, there's frustratingly little information out there about her. She's the great-niece of the Picot of Sykes-Picot fame. And she committed suicide at the age of 57 by jumping out of the window of a Paris apartment by the Seine. As did Deleuze, in the same year!

You are right, there is frustratingly little to find online! I know I've seen her in Resnais' 'Glissements progressifs du plaisir' and she has a small part in 'Connecting Rooms' with Bette Davis. On first glance I can't find out more about her life, or death; I'd have to dig deeper.