In 1983, Chéreau directed the film The Wounded Man (L'Homme Blessé), a more personal project for him. He and his co-writer, Hervé Guibert, worked for six years on the scenario, which tells of a love affair between an older man involved in prostitution and a teenage boy, a dark view in the context of HIV/AIDS. His 1994 film was La Reine Margot, based on the 1845 historical novel of the same name by Alex Andre Dumas. It won the Jury Prize and Best Actress Award (Virna Lisi) at Cannes, as well as five César Awards. Set in the 16th-century, depicting the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in France, it shows battles and the St Bartholomew's day massacre. A scene of the queen with the head of her lover is reminiscent of the opera Salome, uniting cult and obsession ("Einheit von Kult und Obsession"), as Koch remarks. The film was Chéreau's longest, most expensive production, and his greatest financial success. "[I]t was erotic and violent, and offers poured in from Hollywood," but, he said, "I was always being offered films based in the Renaissance and involving a massacre. I even had an offer from the UK to do a film about Guy Fawkes." He refused similar offers: "It's useless to repeat something you already did." In 1993, in a rare acting role, he appeared as General Montcalm in Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans.