Laurent Pierre Marie Boutonnat (born 14 June 1961 in Paris) is a French composer and film and music video director, best known as the songwriting partner of Mylène Farmer and the director of moody, provocative and literature-inspired music videos.

Career

Laurent Boutonnat directed his first film, Ballade de la Féconductrice, at the age of 17, while the film itself is rated 18. It would later be screened off competition at the Festival de Cannes. The movie contains multiple graphic elements that would characterize Boutonnat's provocative style.

In 1984, having composed a song called "Maman a tort" with Jerome Dahan for which they needed a female singer, they started auditioning, and Mylène Farmer, a young student in acting, eventually showed up. Boutonnat and Farmer then started an artistic collaboration which goes on to this day. While Farmer had limited songwriting input on her first album, she thereafter took the habit of writing all the lyrics while Boutonnat composes the music and arranges it.