Valérie Wilson was an early transitioner. By her late teens she was living as female and performing at L’Alcazar, a nightclub competing with Le Carrousel.
From there she was recruited to act in the sex comedy La michetonneuse. As she was still under age, her mother had to sign the contract. La michetonneuse was filmed 1969-1970 but not released until 1972. The film follows Justine who leaves her family and university in search of freedom. She is befriended by Valérie, a trans performer at L’Alcazar (and the film includes scenes of Valérie’s actual performance at L’Alcazar).
From this, Valérie Wilson was recruited to act in what turned out to be the final film by the New Wave/existentialist director Jean-Pierre Melville. Un Flic (A Cop) starring Alain Delon and Catherine Deneuve, and Wilson was the second major female character in the film. She drives a good car and wears a fur coat, and is an informer to Delon’s cop, and is apparently cis, but after Delon’s cop fails to capture the heroin shipment, he blames the messenger and threatens her with jail for cross-dressing and uses transphobic slurs.
Wilson’s third film, Un ange au paradis, is of a married man having an affair with a trans woman. After its release, she was interviewed on the televison program Chutes en tourney. The director of the film, Jean-Pierre Blanc was also interviewed in the same program, and he labelled Valérie’s character the titular ‘angel’ of the film (reflected also in the character’s name, Marie-Ange), saying that she was the only ‘honest’ character. He also stated that he had deliberately cast a ‘real travesti’ and that being one ‘is not all bad’.
Her last film was Change pas de main, a porn film, features Valérie as a nightclub dancer in the first 20 minutes.
After that she withdrew from public life.
- Francis Leroi (dir). La michetonneuse, scr : Francois Jouffa & Francis Leroi, with Christine Leuk as Justine and Valérie Wilson as Valérie. France 90 mins 1972.
- Jean-Pierre Melville (dir & scr). Un Flic, with Alain Delon, Catherine Deneuve and Valérie Wilson as Gaby. France 98 mins 1972.
- Jean-Pierre Blanc (dir & scr). Un ange au paradis, with Valérie Wilson as Marie-Ange Bystrzanowiez, Pascale Arcia as Le Transsexuel and Jean-Claude Dreyfus as Un travesti de la Grande Eugène. France 85 mins 1973.
- Entretien avec Valérie Wilson. Chutes en tourne, 3ème chaîne, Octobre 1973.
- Paul Vecchiali (dir). Change pas de main, scr: Noel Simsolo & Paul Vecchiali, with Valérie Wilson as Mylène. France 92 mins 1975.
- Diana Santiago. « Valérie Wilson ». Diane et le sexe des anges. 2011. Archive.
- Willow Catelyn Maclay. Musings on Transgender Cinema: "The Strange Movie within a Movie in Jean-Pierre Melville's "Un Flic"". Patreon.com, Jan 17, 2021. Online.
- Christopher Wolff & Jesse Blanchard “‘They Lack Imagination…’ – Valérie Wilson and Trans Life in the Audiovisual Archive”. View: Journal of European Television History & Culture, 14,28, 2025. Online.
FR.Wikipedia IMDB Allociné Elcinema
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Wolf and Blanchard quote the La michetonneuse press kit that claims that Valérie was 19 when the film was made. However if she were born in 1953, she would be only 16/17 in 1969/1970.
IMDB names Wilson’s character in Un Flic as ‘Gaby’; other sources do not give her a name or list her as ‘transvestite’. She is not referred to by name in the film.
Maclay in particular reads a past affair between ‘Gaby’ and Delon’s cop based on facial expressions and intonations. Such is in the eye of the beholder.
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