Two expressions that are useful when situating activities in relation to one another in time are après avoir and après être. Both translate to ‘after having done something’ or ‘after doing something’ in English (Après avoir fait ses devoirs, il a joué avec son petit frère – After doing/having done his homework, he played with his little brother). While their usage is not too complicated, they are employed in slightly different grammatical environments which can make it tricky to differentiate between them. Understanding the difference involves getting a handle on the use of être and avoir with the passé composé.

Both expressions are followed by the past participle of the main verb (in the example above, ‘fait’ and ‘joué’ are the past participles of ‘faire’ and ‘jouer’ respectively). The past participle (henceforth abbreviated ‘pp’) agrees in gender and number with the entity (subject or object) to which it refers according to certain principles; as always, there are a few exceptions to note along the way.

ÊTRE

Knowing when to employ ‘après être’ over ‘après avoir’ involves knowing which verbs use être in the passé composé. These are your DRMRSVANDERTRAMP verbs and reflexive verbs.

Reflexive verbs always use être in the passé composé, no exceptions (reflexive verbs are used to describe actions one performs on oneself). E.g. ‘I brushed my teeth yesterday’ – ‘je me suis brossé les dents hier’.

Agreement rule 1: If a direct object is placed before the verb, then the pp agrees with it:

Après s’être lavée, Marie est sortie avec son copain – who/what did Marie wash? Herself. The reflexive pronoun se (appearing here as s’ because ‘être’ begins with a vowel) corresponds to ‘herself’ and is placed before the verb laver, therefore the pp needs to agree with it.

Agreement rule 2: If the direct object is placed after the verb, the pp does not agree with it:

Après s’être lavé les cheveux, Marie est sortie avec son copain – who/what did Marie wash? Her hair. Is hair (les cheveux) placed before or after the verb laver? After. Therefore, there is no agreement.

DRMRSVANDERTRAMP verbs are a bit trickier in that they can use either avoir or être depending on the meaning that is being sought.* When used with être, their meaning is similar to that of reflexive verbs (i.e. they denote an action been performed on oneself). When used with avoir, they describe an action been performed by one entity on another. Note the contrast in these examples:

Elle est descendue de la voiture – She got down from the car

Elle a descendu le capot de la voiture – She lowered the bonnet of the car

In the first example, she is lowering herself from the car, so ‘être’ is used and the pp agrees with ‘elle’. In the second example, she is lowering something else other than herself, so ‘avoir’ is used and the pp does not agree with ‘elle’.

Après être descendue de la voiture, elle se dirigeait vers la maison – After having gotten down from the car, she headed for the house (this can also be written as ‘after getting down from the car, she…’) – Agreement as per the reasoning above

Après avoir descendu le capot de la voiture, elle a vérifié l’état des pneus – After having closed the bonnet of the car, she checked the state of the tyres. Agreement rule 2 above applies here. The direct object le capot is placed after the verb descendre, therefore the pp does not agree with it (for a quick revision of direct objects and their pronouns, click here).

*About half of the DRMRSVANDERTRAMP verbs can only be employed with être in the passé composé. They are: revenir, aller, naître, partir, mourir, venir, arriver, devenir and rester. These are verbs that can only be employed intransitively (i.e. they cannot take an object). This makes sense since actions such as dying (mourir), being born (naître) and going somewhere (aller) can only occur with respect to one entity (he died, she was born, they went to school). They cannot be performed on another entity the way that actions like descendre and others can.

AVOIR

See ‘Être’ above for how the pp of DRMRSVANDERTRAMP verbs using ‘avoir’ agree.

Verbs that are not employed in a reflexive manner and are not DRMRSVANDERTRAMP verbs using être all use avoir by default in the passé composé (the only exception to this is the verb passer which can use both). In this case, the pp only agrees if a direct object precedes avoir in the form of a direct object pronoun:

Après les avoir vus dans le cinéma, Marc est allé à leur rencontre – After having seen them in the cinema, Marc went to meet them (here the pp ‘vu’ agress with the direct object ‘les’)

The pp of ‘faire’ is invariable when it is followed by the infinitive: Après les avoir fait cuire pendant quinze minutes, j’ai melangé les pâtes avec la sauce – After having cooked them for fifteen minutes, I mixed the pasta with the sauce (not ‘faites cuire’).

Key principle

When dealing with pp agreements, always ask yourself ‘to whom/what is the verb referring?’ In French, everything in a sentence revolves around the verb. If you can ascertain who is doing what, you will be a step closer to making the right choices in agreements. Go back to the examples (especially those of Marie) and see if you can deduce a logical reasoning pattern and apply the same principle to similar cases.

Après que can be used in place of ‘après avoir’ and ‘après être’, but it is somewhat less frequent especially in spoken French:

Après être partie en Asie, Nadya s’installait près de Taiwan – Après qu’elle est partie en Asie, Nadya s’installait près de Taiwan (After having left for Asia, Nadya settled close to Taiwan)

‘Après que’ is needed when introducing a subject other than the one already mentioned within the same sentence: Il invitait des amis chez lui après que sa mère est partie. Because there are two different entities here (il and sa mere), après avoir/après être would not make sense. Note that unlike avant que, ‘après que’ does not use the subjunctive.

To express an action that took place before another, use avant que or avant de. ‘Avant que’ is followed by the subjunctive, while ‘avant de’ is followed by the infinitive:

Avant d’aller à la plage, ils ont mis de la crème solaire – Before going to the beach, they put on sunscreen

Avant qu’ils soient allés à la plage, ils ont mis de la crème solaire