as Lucien Michèle Moretti as The director Jacques Nolot as man at the cemetery Bruno Todeschini as Émilie's lover Jean Bousquet as Émilie's father Roschdy Zem as Medhi Ingrid Caven as singer at the bar Production My Favorite Season is based on an original screenplay by director André Téchiné that he and the scriptwriter and actor Pascal Bonitzer adapted for the screen. For the main roles Téchiné cast Deneuve and Auteuil; it was their third collaboration, having worked together in Gérard Pirès's crime drama L'Agression (Act of Aggression) (1975) and Claude Lelouch's Us Two (À nous deux) (1979). Mastroianni, daughter of Catherine Deneuve and Marcelo Mastroianni, and Chaplin, a granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin, made their film debuts. Principal shooting took place in Toulouse and in the department of Haute-Garonne. Release Box office My Favorite Season premiered on 14 May 1993 as the opening film at the 46th Cannes Film Festival. With 1.1 million tickets sold, it remains Téchiné's biggest box office success in France. The film was initially unable to acquire an American distributor and was released in the United States only three years later, after the modest art-house success of Téchiné's next film, Wild Reeds. It made $760,865 at the American box office, a respectable amount for a foreign-language art film. Critical reception The film received generally good reviews. It is widely considered, with Wild Reeds and Thieves, one of Téchiné's best. Rotten Tomatoes reports that 92% of 12 critics gave it a positive review. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called My Favorite season "One of those intriguing films that functions without a plot, and uses instead an intense curiosity about its characters". In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote that the film "finds the director probing believable troubles with honesty, intelligence and tact...Téchiné echoes the emotional fearlessness of a Bergman or Cassavetes in trying to capture the difficult, unruly essence of his characters' inner lives." She called the film an "intense, moving story of loss and renewal". Online film critic James Berardinelli praised the film, writing, "For those who enjoy rich, complex character dramas, the arrival of My Favorite Season is a cause for celebration". Edward Gutmann of The San Francisco Chronicle praised the look of the film. Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly called it "mature and pensive". Todd McCarthy of Variety found the plot "dull". Awards and nominations Boston Film Critics (USA)