French film star near death - boyfriend to be questioned

French film star Marie Trintignant was in a coma and on a life support system in a Lithuanian hospital today after being beaten at her hotel.

Doctors said there was little chance she would survive.

Police identified her boyfriend, French rock singer Bertrand Cantat, as a suspect.

Trintignant, 41, was taken to a hospital in the capital Vilnius in the early hours of Sunday.

She was staying at the Vilnius Domina Plaza Hotel with her mother and Cantat, said hospital doctor Robertas Kvascevicius.

Trintignant, who starred in scores of French and several Hollywood films, had been in a coma for two hours before arriving at the hospital, he said.

She underwent surgery to ease pressure on her brain caused by cerebral haemorrhaging, but remained in a coma today.

“At this point, I cannot promise anything,” he said when asked about her prognosis.

Kvascevicius the daughter of cinema heartthrob Jean-Louis Trintignant was being kept alive by artificial respiration.

“In such cases the chances for survival are minimal,” he said. “The rate of mortality is 90 to 95%. There is little chance she will pull through it.”

Cantat, identified by Lithuanian officials as Trintignant’s boyfriend, is suspected of beating her, said police spokeswoman Ruta Andriuskaite.

She said that Cantat, lead singer with French band Noir Desir, had been admitted to the same hospital on Sunday after drinking “dangerously high” amounts of alcohol but that he had been released today, returning to the Domina Plaza Hotel.

Cantat was not arrested, though police planned to question him at the hotel today, Andriuskaite said.

She said it could take days or weeks before authorities decide whether to formally charge him.

Police usually bar suspects from leaving the country during investigations.

A senior police official, Juozas Kandzezauskas, said he left open the possibility that Trintignant fell and hit her head – after being pushed by Cantat.

“Maybe it will be described as an accident. We should be in no rush. We will speak to the suspect and everything will be clear.”

Lithuania’s Lietuvos Rytas newspaper quoted an Italian tourist staying at the same hotel in the capital’s medieval quarter as saying he heard shouting coming from Trintignant’s room early on Sunday.

The newspaper said Trintignant’s son, Romen Kolinka, called an ambulance after she was attacked.

Trintignant, born in Paris in 1962, made her first film appearances as a teenager in films produced by her mother, Nadine Trintignant. Though mostly typecast as neurotic, mentally unstable women, she has tried in recent years to do more comic acting.

Alain Corneau’s Serie noire launched her career and at the age of 17 she performed in La Terrasse alongside her father.

She has been in the capital of the small Baltic state since the beginning of June playing the lead role in a joint French-Lithuanian TV movie called Colette, a love story set in the 19th century.

The film, which also stars Lambert Wilson, was being directed by Trintignant’s mother.

The Baltic Sea coast nation, with castles and manor houses dotted across its vast forests, has become a favourite venue for European and Hollywood film makers for its old-world ambience.