French cinema has its #MeToo moment, sparking growing need for intimacy coordinators

A cascade of sexual violence allegations has rocked the French film industry in recent months, with actor Judith Godrèche leading the charge for a reckoning about gender-based abuse. Calls to safeguard actors on set are growing, as is the need for intimacy coordinators – a job that is yet to be officially recognised in France.

For the first time in history, an actor spoke to MPs in the French upper house of parliament about sexual violence and gender-based abuse in the film industry last week.

Addressing the Senate’s women’s rights committee, actor Judith Godrèche called for the establishment of a commission of inquiry into gender-based violence and reprehended the “incestuous family” that is French cinema.

The actor-turned-filmmaker has become a bellwether for France’s #MeToo movement. She recently accused two filmmakers, Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon, of sexually assaulting her as a teenager. Both men have denied the allegations.

In her speech, Godrèche also urged for a “more effective system of control” that would include a “neutral advisor” in shoots involving minors and an intimacy coordinator for sex scenes.

Her words have all the more clout given that there are only four intimacy coordinators currently working in the whole of France.

Breaking power dynamics

Ten years ago, intimacy coordinators were practically unheard of. Although theatre productions have used “intimacy choreographers” in the past, the job of “coordinator” got its first big break in the US in 2017, when a catalogue of sexual violence cases in the film industry were brought to light by the #MeToo movement.

Actors began demanding professional safeguards for their well-being on set and pushed for better regulation of intimate scenes, not only to ensure full consent but also to provide accountability in cases of gender-based violence.

Read more‘Wind of revolt’ sweeps French cinema in belated #MeToo reckoning

“In a 2017 TV series called The Deuce, one of the actors decided she needed more help discussing her boundaries and wanted more support when shooting intimate scenes. So on season two, HBO hired an intimacy coordinator,” says Paloma Garcia Martens, one of the few intimacy coordinators working in France. “And then it kind of spread.”

For scenes involving nudity, simulated sexual acts, sexual violence or assault, or any other form of sexual activity from kissing to fondling – intimacy coordinators act as mediators between the actors and the director.

Much like stunt coordinators, their role is to make sure actors are safe throughout the filming process and that scenes look believable. They act as “neutral advisors”, to use Godrèche’s words, and find a middle ground between in a relationship that is often fraught with power dynamics.

“Filmmakers sometimes have a way of directing actors that is a little violent,” says Pedro Labaig, a first assistant director based in Paris. He says that since intimacy coordinators are so uncommon in French film productions, it is often up to assistant directors to ensure the well-being of everyone on set.

“There have been times I’ve had to intervene and reassure the actors that I’m here, that they’re allowed to speak to the director and that it’s OK to tell them they need to do things differently,” he says. “It’s complicated though. The director is the artist and nobody wants to boss the artist around. But I can, to a certain extent.”

Once intimacy coordinators receive a script, they begin by clarifying the details of intimate scenes with the director. “Screenplays can often have vague phrases like ‘they make love passionately’,” says Marine Longuet, an assistant director and member of the feminist collective 50/50, which combats sexism in French cinema.

“Intimacy coordinators will ask the director what they mean by that phrase. Will the actor be naked? Will they be under a duvet? Do they kiss? Are their bodies covered in sweat? They help directors be more precise … And ensure that actors know exactly what they’ve signed up for,” says Longuet.  

They also work with the cast to define boundaries before scenes are rehearsed, carefully creating a safe space and open dialogue to ensure consent is given throughout the filming process.

“There is such a prevalence of trauma around sex … Most actors I’ve worked with have told me horror stories of intimate things that went wrong on set at some point in their lives,” Martens explains. “Very often, they are put in positions where they have to improvise or they haven’t had the time to go over [what their] boundaries [are]. They never even thought that they could actually consider their own boundaries. And they end up in situations that, although most people are well-meaning, lead to harm.”

Read moreGender-based violence in French universities: ‘I decided something had to change’

While filming, intimacy coordinators stay on set. If an actor changes their mind about a detail in a scene or begins to feel uncomfortable, they can flag this to the coordinator. And if a director wants to change something previously agreed upon, they must go through the coordinator and get approval from the actors before doing so.

“Mostly, it’s all about communication … If at one point the director’s idea isn’t aligned with someone’s boundaries, then we workshop solutions,” says Martens. “We connect with all the different departments [to inform them of boundaries], including costume and make-up to find ways of hiding specific body parts for example, and create closed set protocols to define which essential personnel is allowed during intimate scenes and who is allowed access to monitors, these kinds of things.”  

In the US and the UK, intimacy coordinators are much more prevalent than in France. The profession is widely recognised and regulated. US TV network HBO has required their presence on all of their productions with intimate scenes since 2018, a decision which helped popularise the job.

The US Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) published guidelines for intimacy coordinators in January 2020. And Directors UK, an organisation representing UK screen directors, published a quick guide in 2019.

To date, there are no official guidelines for intimacy coordinators in France. Nor is there an official training course for people to become certified intimacy coordinators.

A budding profession in France

According to a study published by the French National Joint Employment and Training Committee (CPNEF) in December 2023, there are only four intimacy coordinators in the whole of France, compared to 80 in the US.

All intimacy coordinators in France are women, but male intimacy coordinators do exist. David Thackeray from the UK worked on the fourth season of the TV series Sex Education, for example. 

The CPNEF recommends those interested in working as intimacy coordinators to go through SAG-AFTRA for vetted training courses, which all take place in English. The committee says it is currently working on creating a certified training course to encourage more people to take up the profession.

“I’m seeing more and more people who claim to be intimacy coordinators,” says Longuet worriedly. She fears that without proper training, self-defined intimacy coordinators could make matters worse. “We shouldn’t be adding to the risk.”

As of January 2025, the CPNEF plans on training six people a year to become intimacy coordinators.

“This job does not yet exist in France and is currently being defined in order to determine appropriate training,” the French organisation for assistant directors in fiction AFAR wrote on its website in 2020. “The director’s team is currently responsible for ensuring that ‘intimate’ scenes run smoothly.”

Although Martens works on French film productions, she was trained abroad. “I did several training courses in the US and Canada, and right now I’m in the process of updating my certification with Principal Intimacy Professionals,” Martens explains.

There is no requirement for intimacy coordinators on French film sets. Directors or production companies decide for themselves whether or not scenes in a film warrant their presence.

“Sometimes stunt coordinators are called on set for no reason. But I have never come across an intimacy coordinator,” says Labaig.

In the absence of regulations, it is up to the employer to protect the health and well-being of workers. Since producers or a production company are usually considered the employer on film sets, they must implement the appropriate prevention, information and training measures and see that what happens during working hours is in line with the French Labour Code.

Film actors and crews can also turn to “harassment officers” in cases of sexual assault.

“Harassment officers” are in charge of taking on and handling cases of gender-based violence.

According to the French Labour Code, it is mandatory for French companies with more than 250 employers to have a harassment officer, and each officer has to undergo mandatory training.

“Harassment officers are crew members who, on top of their job on set, are there to provide resources in case something happens. But until recently, they have rarely been mentioned, because productions often didn’t have human resources managers,” says Longuet. “Their role is to flag whenever a labour law has been breached and if they see any violence on set, they have a duty to report it.”

“But unlike intimacy coordinators, they are responsible for the entire team. Intimacy coordinators have a very specific role minding the relationship between directors and actors,” she says.

The tide is turning

Longuet explains the lack of intimacy coordinators in France as being twofold. Directors are afraid of losing autonomy, and France has a vision of cinema as a sacred artform rather than an industry.

“Directors often imagine intimacy coordinators to be some kind of moral police,” says Longuet. “And since it can take four, five, six years to make a film … it is so precious to them – they can be afraid that an intimacy coordinator will rob them of something.”

But for Longuet, this is simply a misconception of what the job actually entails. “When we see intimacy coordinators at work, it is clear that they don’t direct scenes. They prepare them.”

Then there is a broader cultural understanding of what cinema is. Longuet explains that in the US, cinema has always been seen as an industry. And where there is an industry, there are protocols. “In France, we have a different model. Since the New Wave, we have prioritised auteur cinema. The auteur is the director, and the director always has the final say, which is not always the case in the US or UK. The auteur writes, directs and generally isn’t asked to share their thoughts on the mise en scène (production),” she says.

“It’s as though directors have some kind of exclusive territory.”

Martens also mentions the fact that the US, Canada and the UK have very powerful actor’s unions. In France, “actors don’t have a lot of power, and a lot of times their agents don’t even support them because they are just chasing the next check”, she explains.

Although intimacy coordinators have yet to become an integral part of French film productions, the industry is seeing a monumental shift in behaviour. More and more women like Godrèche are speaking out about the inherent sexism and abuse they face working in cinema, paving the road for some light at the end of the tunnel.

“Of course, gender-based violence is still rampant, but both in my work with 50/50 and as an assistant director, I try to work from a perspective of solidarity and sisterhood. To me, that’s eminently precious,” says Longuet.

“When I meet colleagues on set, I feel a newfound sense of solidarity. Even if everything seems to be exploding around us, I am seeing change. I see kindness and goodwill around me. And that’s something to celebrate.”

The tide is turning for France’s handful of intimacy coordinators as well. “I’m getting a lot more calls from production companies,” Martens beams.

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‘Wind of revolt’ sweeps French cinema in belated #MeToo reckoning

French cinema has been rocked by a new wave of allegations of child rape and sexual assault targeting household names in the industry, bolstering talk of a long-awaited breakthrough for the #MeToo movement in France following a nationwide controversy over Gérard Depardieu. The latest accusations shine a stark light on the culture of impunity that prevailed in a country where auteur worship has long served as a cover for abuse.

French cinema’s #MeToo breakthrough has been heralded, and pushed back, often enough to warrant caution – but there are signs the ground is finally shifting, more than six years after cinema’s feminist revolution kicked off across the Atlantic. 

In 2017, at the dawn of the #MeToo era, French actor Judith Godrèche was among the first to speak out against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, telling the New York Times that the film producer assaulted her in a hotel at the Cannes Film Festival two decades earlier, when she was 24. 

Years later, the actor-turned-filmmaker is at the heart of bombshell allegations that are writing a new chapter in France’s troubled reckoning with sex abuse in the film industry. 

French prosecutors opened an investigation last week after Godrèche, now 51, said she was groomed and raped by filmmaker Benoît Jacquot during a “predatory” relationship that started when she was 14 and he was 39.  

Godrèche, who recently delivered the semi-autobiographical series “Icon of French cinema”, was a child actor when she met Jacquot at a casting call for his movie “Les Mendiants” (The Beggars). She told French daily Le Monde she remained “in his grip” for the following six years, in full sight of the film industry and the media. 

“It’s a story similar to those of children who are kidnapped and grow up without seeing the world, and who cannot think ill of their captor,” Godrèche wrote in a statement for the police juvenile protection unit, quoted by the newspaper.  


Judith Godrèche pictured in 1992, the year she broke off her six-year relationship with Benoît Jacquot. © Bertrand Guay, AFP

Paris prosecutors said they were investigating several potential offences including rape of a minor committed by a person in authority, domestic violence and sexual assault. They said they would also investigate a complaint she filed against another prominent filmmaker, Jacques Doillon, whom she accused of sexually abusing her when she was 15. 

Jacquot, one of France’s best known independent directors, told Le Monde he denied all allegations. The 77-year-old said: “It was me, without irony, who was under her spell for six years.” 

Doillon, whose partner at the time of the alleged abuse was the late Jane Birkin, also denied the accusations against him – including claims of sexual assault voiced in the media by actors Isild Le Besco and Anna Mouglalis in the wake of Godrèche’s allegations. “That Judith Godrèche and other women through her have wish to denounce a system, an era, a society, is courageous, commendable and necessary,” Doillon, 79, wrote in a statement to AFP. He added: “But the justness of the cause does not authorise arbitrary denunciations, false accusations and lies.” 


The allegations levelled at two household names in French film have further rattled an industry already under fire for having shrugged off sexism and sexual abuse for decades. Godrèche’s accusations relate to the period 1986-1992, meaning they are unlikely to lead to prosecution because the statute of limitations has expired. The authorities’ decision to investigate them nonetheless suggests a new willingness to shed light on sexual abuse in the arts. 

Two days after Godrèche filed her complaints, prosecutors said they had requested a trial for 59-year-old film director Christophe Ruggia, who has been charged with sexually assaulting actor Adèle Haenel when she was a minor. It will be up to magistrates to decide whether to press ahead with a trial. 

Haenel, now 34, lodged a complaint against Ruggia in 2020, accusing him of subjecting her to “constant sexual harassment” from the age of 12 to 15. Later that year, she stormed out of the César Awards ceremony, the French equivalent of the Oscars, when the Best Director award was handed to veteran filmmaker Roman Polanski, the target of multiple allegations of sexual abuse of minors. 

The walkout made her an early champion of the #MeToo movement in France. But her decision three years later, at the height of her fame, to quit the industry over its enduring “complacency” towards sex abuse was seen by many feminist campaigners as evidence of French resistance to change. 

A ‘cover’ for abuse 

French cinema’s troubled relationship with the #MeToo movement stems from traits specific to the film industry and to France itself, said Bérénice Hamidi, a sociologist of gender and the arts at the Université Lumière in Lyon. 

“The arts, and film in particular, are overexposed to sexist and sexual violence, because they are professions that feel apart from society and its rules, in which selection and seduction are very closely intertwined, and in which job insecurity puts many young women in a position of vulnerability,” she said. 

“But there is also a culture that is very French in its veneration of artists and the creative process, which excuses all behaviour,” Hamidi added. “There’s this idea that in order to create you have to be in a transgressive relationship with social norms. In this scale of values, women’s lives count for nothing compared to genius and talent. Excusing the behaviour of aggressive artists is specific to France.” 

French critics of the #MeToo movement have often come from cinema itself, inspired by an entrenched suspicion of American puritanical campaigns and witch-hunts. Some have accused the movement of being fuelled by a contempt for men and the art of seduction. 

In 2018, film icon Catherine Deneuve was among 100 French women who signed a newspaper column accusing the #MeToo campaign of going too far. “We defend a right to pester, which is vital to sexual freedom,” they said. 

It’s a theme Jacquot picked up in his defence last week, lamenting the importation from the US of a “frightening neo-Puritanism”. He suggested his relationship with Godrèche carried an interest for both parties, telling Le Monde: “She wanted to be an actress, she had a filmmaker on hand.” 

The newspaper has exhumed a host of past quotes by Jacquot that, in hindsight, appear to capture much of what the #MeToo movement has denounced. 

In a 2006 interview with arts weekly Les Inrockuptibles, he spoke of a tacit “pact” underpinning his collaboration with Godrèche in his 1990 movie “La Désenchantée” (The Disenchanted), saying: “If I give her the film, she gives herself completely in return. Which can be understood in any sense you like.” 

Nine years later, he told the left-leaning newspaper Libération: “My work as a filmmaker consists of pushing an actress to cross a threshold. Meeting her, talking to her, directing her, separating from her and then finding her again: the best way to do all that is to be in the same bed.” 

In an Instagram post in early January, Godrèche said she decided to name Jacquot after coming across a 2011 documentary in which he described cinema as a “sort of cover” for illicit behaviour. He spoke of his relationship with the then child actress as a form of “transgression” that brought him “a degree of admiration” in the “small world of cinema”. 

Jacquot told Le Monde last week he regretted those words, describing them as arrogant banter. 

French actor Judith Godrèche has accused director Benoit Jacquot of raping her when she was 14 years old.
French actor Judith Godrèche has accused director Benoît Jacquot of raping her when she was 14. He says theirs was a “loving relationship”. © FRANCE 24 screengrab

Godrèche recently moved back to France after a 10-year stint in New York, motivated in part by her desire to get away from the “small world” of French film. Her hit series “Icon of French cinema” tells the story of a French film star’s return to Paris after a decade in Hollywood. Through flashbacks, it revisits the abuse she endured as a 14-year-old child actress groomed by a leading French director. 

Its streaming release in late December came on the heels of the hugely successful theatrical launch of Vanessa Filho’s “Le Consentement”, based on the eponymous 2019 book by Vanessa Springora, a memoir of having been sexually abused from the age of 14 by a celebrated writer who was more than three times her age. Gabriel Matzneff, the accused writer who made no secret of his preference for minors, including preteens, is being investigated for rape, now aged 87. 

In an interview with the Guardian last month, Godrèche stressed the importance of speaking out about the grooming of teenagers by older men in positions of authority. 

“These people usually come to you as protectors. They become a parental figure,” she said, noting that the French film industry was still protecting powerful men and that a form of omerta remained prevalent. She added: “I’m not here to carry out a witch-hunt, but you might expect a little compassion.” 

Fall of the Ogre 

Talk of powerful men turning a blind eye to allegations of abuse, or even siding with purported aggressors, became the subject of a nationwide controversy in late December when French President Emmanuel Macron condemned a “manhunt” targeting French film icon Gérard Depardieu

The world-famous actor has been under formal investigation for rape since 2020 and has been accused of rape or sexual assault by a dozen other women – allegations he denies. His reputation took a further hit in December when public broadcaster France Télévision ran a documentary detailing his history of sexual abuse allegations and featuring interviews with several of his accusers. Entitled “Fall of the Ogre”, the documentary featured a segment filmed in North Korea in which the 75-year-old actor is seen making crude, sexual and misogynistic jokes, including one referring to a child riding a pony. 

In the weeks that followed, Depardieu’s wax statue was removed from the Musée Grevin in Paris, Canada’s Quebec region stripped him of its top honour, and Swiss public broadcaster RTS said it was halting the broadcast of films in which he plays a leading role.  The backlash sparked concern in France that the star of “Cyrano de Bergerac” and some 200 other titles was being cancelled outright. 

Appearing on a television talk show on December 20, Macron rebuked his then Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak – who has since been fired – for suggesting Depardieu might be stripped of his Légion d’honneur, France’s highest decoration. 

“He’s an immense actor, a genius of his art,” Macron said in defence of Depardieu, stressing that the Légion d’honneur was not a “moral” order. He added: “I say it as president and as a citizen, he makes France proud.” 

In his remarks, Macron also suggested the documentary’s North Korea segment might have been edited in a misleading way, though France Télévisions later said it was authenticated by a bailiff who viewed the raw footage.  

The president’s words drew outrage from film workers, rights groups and opposition politicians. Generation.s Feministe, a feminist collective, said they were “an insult” to all women who had suffered sexual violence. Macron’s remarks were “not just scandalous but also dangerous”, added the #NousToutes feminist group.  

Stepping into the fray, his predecessor François Hollande said he was “not proud of Gérard Depardieu”. He also berated the president over his failure to spare a word for the film star’s alleged victims. 

Cult of the auteur 

According to Geneviève Sellier, a professor of film studies at the Université Montaigne in Bordeaux, Macron’s words were indicative of a French “cult of the auteur” that has long been used to excuse or cover up reprehensible behaviour. 

“The cult of the auteur places artistic genius – regarded as necessarily male – above the law,” she explains. “This French tradition explains in part why the country remains largely blind to the realities of male domination and abuse.”

Sellier said auteur veneration underpinned a controversial petition that was published on Christmas Day in the right-wing daily Le Figaro, denouncing a “lynching of Depardieu”, signed by dozens of friends and colleagues of the actor. They included former French first lady and singer Carla Bruni, British actor Charlotte Rampling and Depardieu’s former partner, actor Carole Bouquet.  

“When Gérard Depardieu is targeted this way, it is the art (of cinema) that is being attacked,” read the text, warning against a campaign to “erase” Depardieu. “Depriving ourselves of this immense actor would be a tragedy, a defeat. The death of the art. Our art.” 

Hamidi said the petition reflected a “form of blurring between reality and fiction” that is used to shield artists from scrutiny of their behaviour. “There’s a form of transfiguration at play,” she said. “It’s as if punishing Depardieu meant depriving us of the Cyrano he played.” She added: “You often hear people say of Depardieu that he is larger than life, in the sense that he is also too big for the rules that apply to common mortals, and that those rules therefore should not apply to him.” 

French actor Gérard Depardieu, pictured at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival, has faced a string of allegations of rape and sexual assault in recent years.
French actor Gérard Depardieu, pictured at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival, has faced a string of allegations of rape and sexual assault in recent years. © Axel Schmidt, AP

The text in support of Depardieu swiftly triggered a flurry of counter-petitions, whose signatories were markedly younger of age.  

The Figaro petition “is a sinister and perfect illustration of an old world that refuses to let things change”, read an open letter signed by more than 600 artists, arguing that the text in support of Depardieu “spat in the face” of his accusers. 

“Art is not a totem of impunity,” read another letter published by Libération. “We are not attacking the art we hold dear: on the contrary, we want to protect it, firmly refusing to use it as a pretext for abuse of power, harassment or sexual violence.” 

As the backlash intensified, several signatories of the original petition scrambled to distance themselves from the text, particularly once it emerged it had been written by a little-known actor and writer for the ultra-conservative magazine Causeur, described as close to far-right pundit and former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour.  

Patrice Leconte, who directed Depardieu in the recent “Maigret” (2022), said he had been a “fool” to sign the petition without checking who wrote it, while reiterating his dismay at the “media lynching” the film star was being subjected to. Roberto Alagna, the operatic tenor, suggested in an Instagram post that he had been “tricked” into signing a petition he “hadn’t even read”.  

Others, like actor and stage director Jacques Weber, expressed greater contrition.  

“Yes, I did sign, forgetting the victims and the fate of thousands of women around the world who are suffering from a state of affairs that has been accepted for too long,” Weber wrote in an article published by Mediapart, under the headline, “Guilty”. He added: “My signature was another rape.” 

France’s rayonnement 

The age gap exposed by the competing petitions has revived talk of a generational divide in attitudes towards sexual misconduct in the arts – a divide previously highlighted by the controversial open letter published in 2018 by Deneuve and her peers.  

“There’s a generation that still doesn’t understand this societal evolution,” Muriel Reus, vice president of #MeTooMedia, which campaigns against sexism and sexual misconduct in the media, told France Info radio at the height of the Depardieu controversy.  

This generational divide conceals mechanisms of social domination that are particularly pervasive in the arts, argued Sellier. 

“In film, powerful men tend to be older, while female victims are younger, poorer and in more vulnerable jobs,” she said. Those women who did speak out, including among older generations, were simply ignored in the past, she added. 

Sophie Marceau, one of France’s best-known actors, told Paris Match weekly magazine in December that Depardieu was “rude and inappropriate” when they worked together on the set of “Police” in 1985. Marceau, 57, said she publicly denounced his behaviour at the time, which she described as “unbearable”, adding: “many people turned on me, trying to make it look like I was being a nuisance”.   

Marceau said part of the reason he got away with it was that he targeted women with low-level jobs on set, not the stars.  

Days later, fellow actress Isabelle Carré denounced a culture of impunity in French cinema and of sexualising young girls in an op-ed piece in women’s magazine Elle. A prominent actress with dozens of films to her name, Carré, 52, said she had been the object of unwanted sexual attention since she was 11. Regarding Depardieu, she wrote: “Isn’t it astounding that it took 50 years to point out to an actor that his behaviour towards female assistants, dressers and co-actors is not acceptable?”  

Protesters hold a placard reading
Protesters hold a placard reading “No producers for rapists” during a demonstration outside a theatre in Bordeaux where Gérard Depardieu is due to perform on May 24, 2023. © Romain Perrocheau, AFP

On Monday, members of the Société des réalisatrices et réalisateurs de films (SRF), an organisation representing French filmmakers, issued a statement in support of Godrèche and others who have spoken out in recent days – and expressing dismay at the industry’s habit of turning a blind eye to abuse.  

“We firmly denounce the confusion between creative desire and sexual enslavement, which has been ideologically encouraged by a large part of our professional environment for decades,” they wrote. “We are also struck by the silence of those who witnessed it then and now.”   

The next day, the writer and film critic Hélène Frappat hailed a “wind of revolt blowing across France”, praising Godrèche for having “broken the spell” that holds young girls in silence. In an op-ed in Le Monde, Frappat wrote: “The girls are rising up! It seems our culturally reactionary country, this time, will not be able to muzzle them.”  

Welcoming the onset of a “French #MeToo” in an interview with France Inter radio last month, actor Laure Calamy praised her colleagues who dared to take on powerful men. She said their courage contrasted with Macron’s support for Depardieu, which she likened to a “slap in their face”.   

At stake in this tussle is the very credibility of France and its film industry, Hamidi argued, highlighting a French “backwardness” on the issue. She said: “Statements such as Macron’s project a catastrophic image abroad, giving the impression that we are still in Ancien Régime France, in which the powerful can take advantage of women.”  

Far from preserving France’s cherished cultural rayonnement (influence), the president’s words achieved the very opposite, Sellier added: “It is precisely this blindness to sexist violence that is undermining France’s cultural influence.” 

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From sledgehammers to milking robots: French film charts half a century on a dairy farm

Gilles Perret’s “La Ferme des Bertrand” is something of a rarity in French film: a tale of rural success for three generations of a family of dairy farmers. Its release next week has acquired added resonance as farmers across France rise up in protest at taxes, costs and regulations they say are killing their livelihoods.

The plight of France’s farmers is a well-trodden path in French cinema, typically focusing on the stricken family businesses that modern life has left by the wayside.

In his seminal trilogy “Profils paysans”, Raymond Depardon followed octogenarian farmers and herdsmen scraping a living in remote areas blighted by the rural exodus. Others have investigated the damage wrought by intensive farming and the agrochemical industry, with their trail of livelihoods wrecked and family farms pushed into bankruptcy.

French farmers now number fewer than half a million, a fraction of their postwar total. But their fading world still occupies an outsized place in the national psyche, infused with nostalgia for France’s rural past and tinged with guilt at the hardship experienced by so many. 

Read moreFewer, older, poorer: France’s farming crisis in numbers

La Ferme des Bertrand”, which opens in French cinemas next week, tells a different story: that of a dairy farm’s successful transition to modernity under three generations of the same family.

Its aim is not to belittle or ignore the struggle of others, says Perret, who wrote the film with his partner Marion Richoux, but to showcase an agriculture that is both viable and appealing, and deeply respectful of the environment.

Economic success, human failure

Early on in the film, we meet a trio of shirtless brothers smashing stones with sledgehammers to build the foundation of their future milking parlour. Their lean, muscular bodies hint at an austere life of back-breaking toil and frugality.

The black-and-white footage is taken from a 1972 documentary shot by France’s national broadcaster in the Alpine hamlet where Perret grew up, a few steps away from the dairy farm run by the Bertrand brothers. 

Twenty-five years later, Perret borrowed a camera to film the same trio as they prepared to pass the farm on to their nephew and his wife. He resumed filming another quarter of a century later, with a third generation of Bertrands now at the helm, before merging the three epochs into a fascinating chronicle of half a century of rural resilience and adaptation.

The Bertrand brothers in a 1972 documentary by Marcel Trillat. © ORTF

When they pass the baton in 1997, the three brothers leave behind a healthy business but at a steep cost: all three have remained bachelors, casting aside their personal aspirations to stay tied to their land and cattle throughout a lifetime of personal sacrifice.

As the mustachioed André, the film’s standout character, says in a sobering reflection, their story is one of “economic success and human failure”.

It takes a third generation of the Bertrand family to finally strike a healthier balance between work and family life, aided by an impressive array of machines that has changed the nature of their work beyond recognition.

“The youngsters barely do any manual work nowadays,” mutters André, hunched over his stick, still soldiering on in the film’s most recent footage. “But they sure know a thing or two about machines.”

A protected bubble

André and his brothers provide many of the film’s most endearing scenes, whether expertly wielding a sickle, massaging a chicken, or calling each of their one hundred cows by name.

But Perret’s film does not indulge in nostalgia for a bygone era. It opens with a shot of a brand-new milking machine, which the retiring Hélène, from the second generation of the Bertrand family, jokingly introduces as her “replacement” – one that will make her son’s work less tiring and repetitive.

Hélène (left), her son Marc (right) and her son-in-law Alex: generations two and three of the Bertrand family.
Hélène (left), her son Marc (right) and her son-in-law Alex: generations two and three of the Bertrand family. © Laurent Cousin

The intent is to provoke viewers, says Perret, introducing a form of farming that is in step with society and with the technological evolutions that are shaping our world.

“In many other sectors, mechanisation has led to job losses and a deterioration in working conditions,” he says. “In this case, it appears robots can be of great help to humans, taking over some of the most exhausting tasks in a profession that requires around-the-clock presence, 365 days a year.”

For all the talk of success, the film makes no secret of the physical toll on the Bertrands. André’s two brothers died just weeks into retirement. Their nephew only made it to 50, leaving Hélène with three children and a farm to run.

The fact that the farm powered on owes much to its privileged location in the protected cheesemaking region of Haute-Savoie, home to Reblochon cheese. 

The designation means their milk is sold at twice the price of milk from the plains or industrial farms. They effectively operate in a bubble, protected from the market forces that leave countless other farmers at the mercy of volatile prices they have no control over. 

Toiling with a purpose

In the 25 years since he first filmed the farm, Perret has built up a large body of socially-minded work, sometimes teaming up with the muckraking journalist-turned-politician François Ruffin to denounce the worst effects of unbridled capitalism. His films focus on the human impact of economic and societal transformations, shining a light on spaces of resistance to the coercive forces of globalised economies.

He says growing up alongside the Bertrand family has helped shape his outlook and his interests.

“In all my films I’ve tried to question our relationship to work, the meaning of what we do, how we can improve conditions, and what can be done to preserve our environment,” he says. “These are all things that are at the heart of their lives.”

André's brother Patrick wields his scythe in footage from 1997.
André’s brother Patrick wields his scythe in footage from 1997. © Gilles Perret

In order to qualify for the Reblochon label, the farm is bound to strict guidelines which rule out non-natural foods for the cattle and require the animals to be out grazing in the mountain pastures for a minimum of 150 days a year. 

“It doesn’t quite qualify as organic farming, but it comes very close,” says Perret, stressing the Bertrands’ role in shaping and preserving the pristine environment around the hamlet he still lives in – both a gift of nature and a legacy of their painstaking labour.

“The money we make is for living,” says one of the brothers midway through the film as he soaks in the view, resting on his scythe after a day of toil. “The real satisfaction comes from keeping our nature clean and healthy.”

“La Ferme des Bertrand” (89min) opens in French cinemas on Wednesday, January 31.

France’s farming protests

French farmers have blocked roads, junctions and motorways in protest at pay, low food prices and environmental rules they say are ruining their livelihoods, in an echo of protests taking place in other EU countries.

With convoys of tractors advancing on Paris and threatening to blockade the capital, France’s new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced key concessions on Friday including an end to rising fuel costs and the simplification of regulations.

But the main farming union, the FNSEA, described the measures as insufficient, vowing to maintain its mobilisation until the government meets all of its demands.

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French actors come to Depardieu’s defence amid new rape and sexual assault allegations

Fifty figures from the French entertainment world signed an open letter published Monday defending actor Gérard Depardieu as he faces more than a dozen rape and sexual assault allegations spanning two decades. Most of the accusations have come from those he worked with, with one actress saying his reputation in the film industry is well known and well-deserved. “Anyone who has ever worked with him knows he assaults women,” she said.

Calling Depardieu the “last sacred monster of cinema”, the letter says its signatories “can no longer remain silent in the face of a lynching” and calls on judicial authorities to grant Depardieu the “presumption of innocence that he would enjoy, like everyone else, if he were not the giant of cinema that he is”.

French singer and former first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and English actress Charlotte Rampling were among the signatories to the open letter, which was published in Le Figaro on Christmas Day, along with French Bond girl Carole Bouquet, who was in a relationship with Depardieu for almost a decade starting in 1996.     

The letter comes almost a week after French President Emmanuel Macron sparked outrage by saying he thought Depardieu, 75, was the victim of a “manhunt” amid new assault allegations that emerged this month. 

Years of allegations

Depardieu’s legal troubles began in earnest in February 2021, when he was charged with rape and sexual assault allegedly committed in 2018 against actress Charlotte Arnould at his home in Paris. According to a source close to the case, Depardieu was a friend of the actress’s family.

She filed a complaint in the summer of 2018 when she was 22, saying she had been raped twice by Depardieu at his Paris mansion a few days earlier. Depardieu, who was placed under formal investigation in December 2020, denies the accusations.  

More than a dozen more women came forward in April 2023 with allegations of sexual assault spanning two decades. The French investigative website Mediapart found that 13 additional women had come forward to accuse Depardieu of molesting them on the set of 11 films or series, or in other locations off set, between 2004 and 2022. 

The accusations ranged from “a hand in underwear, on the crotch, on the buttocks or on the breasts” to “obscene sexual remarks” and “insistent grunts”, Mediapart reported.

Even when the alleged abuse happened on set and in front of witnesses, film crews often laughed it off when the women complained, saying it was just the actor’s way, the site’s investigation found.

None of the 13 women have filed official complaints, Mediapart said, but three have given testimony to judicial authorities.

Depardieu has denied the allegations.   

The actor came under renewed fire early this month after a documentary aired on France 2 television showing him making lewd comments about a small girl on horseback and openly discussing his penis on a 2018 trip to North Korea.

Indignation and disgust over video of Gérard Depardieu spouting lewd comments


IN THE PRESS © FRANCE 24

That same week, French actress Hélène Darras accused Depardieu of assaulting her while filming a movie in 2007. She told France 2 that Depardieu groped and propositioned her when she was an extra in the film “Disco”:

He “ran his hand over my thighs and my buttocks” before asking, “‘Do you want to come to my dressing room?’,” Darras recounted. Even after rejecting his advances, she said, “He kept groping me between takes.”

In mid-December, a Spanish journalist said Depardieu had raped her nearly 30 years ago in Paris, telling AFP she filed a criminal complaint with Spanish police. She said the rape happened when she interviewed the actor in 1995 for Cinemania magazine.

High-level protectors

Allegations – or perhaps admissions – of Depardieu’s role in raping women have been circulating for more than 40 years.

In a 1978 interview in Film Comment magazine, Depardieu described his difficult childhood and was quoted as saying, “I had plenty of rapes, too many to count.” 

Time magazine asked Depardieu whether he had participated in these rapes in a 1991 feature story and Depardieu said he had. “But it was absolutely normal in those circumstances,” he added.  

The Time coverage sparked outrage in the United States but did not seem to dim Depardieu’s star in his homeland, with several French political figures turning out to voice support for the actor. Then minister of culture Jack Lang called it a “low blow” targeting one of France’s “great actors”. Some said it was part of a conspiracy to undermine Depardieu’s chance at an Oscar – despite his chances at an Oscar being slim to none at the time.    

“In France, where sex is treated more casually and public figures are protected more carefully by the press, the brouhaha was seen as another example of American prudishness,” Time wrote.

Depardieu later denied making the remarks and threatened to sue the magazine, but Time refused to retract its reporting, saying the comments had been tape recorded.   

Actress Anouk Grinberg, who has known Depardieu for decades, spoke out for the first time in October, saying his proclivities were an open secret in the industry.

“Anyone who has ever worked with him knows he assaults women,” Grinberg, 60, told Elle magazine, adding that people refrained from denouncing him for fear it would hurt their careers. 

Culture Minister Rima Abdul-Malak said in mid-December that the actor’s behaviour “shames France”, noting that Depardieu is at risk of being stripped of his Legion of Honour, the country’s top civilian award. 

But asked about the controversy last week, French President Emmanuel Macron became the latest high-level official to come to Depardieu’s defence. Asked in a wide-ranging interview whether the actor should be stripped of his Légion d’Honneur, Macron said he thought Depardieu was the victim of a “manhunt”.   

 “You will never see me take part in a manhunt. I hate that kind of thing,” he said, adding: “The presumption of innocence is part of our values.”   

One French feminist collective said Macron’s comments were “an insult” to all women who had suffered sexual violence but “first and foremost, [to] those who accused Depardieu”. Another called the president’s remarks “not just scandalous, but also dangerous”.

Green party MP Sandrine Rousseau remarked that “Macron has picked his side – that of the aggressors.” 

Escape into acting

Depardieu became a star in France starting in the 1970s and ’80s with roles in “The Last Metro” and “Jean de Florette” followed by “Cyrano de Bergerac” and “Green Card”, which made him a Hollywood celebrity after he won the Golden Globe best actor award for the role. He later appeared in other international productions, including Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet” and Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi”.

Depardieu grew up in extreme poverty as the third of six children, the son of an illiterate and alcoholic metal worker father. By his own account he mixed with bad company, hanging out with prostitutes before working as a rent boy and committing various crimes. At 16 he landed in jail for stealing a car.

Acting proved his salvation, with money as the main motivating factor. He started on stage in Paris in 1965 and his breakout film came nearly a decade later when he played a ruffian in the erotic comedy “Going Places”.

Despite his successes, Depardieu’s private life ran the gamut from drunk driving offences to one particularly notorious episode involving urinating in the aisle of a plane.

Depardieu has also come under fire in the past for his support of Russia. He left France in 2013 and received Russian citizenship to protest against a tax hike on the rich being proposed at the time. Depardieu has often praised Russia, calling it a “great democracy”, and lauded President Vladimir Putin, whom he has compared to late pope John Paul II. Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, however, he denounced Putin’s “crazy, unacceptable excesses” in his prosecution of the war.

Depardieu has had four children with three different partners, the longest relationship being with Élisabeth, an actress whom he married in 1970 and divorced in 2006. 

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

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Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or wraps up vintage year for women in Cannes

Justine Triet won a richly deserved Palme d’Or on Saturday for her French Alps courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall”, becoming only the third female director to win cinema’s most prestigious prize. But it was a bittersweet win for the home country’s government, whose “repression” of pension protests she blasted in her acceptance speech.

Triet’s award capped a thrilling contest that saw a record seven female directors vie for the Palme d’Or, which only two women had previously won – Jane Campion in 1993 and Julia Ducournau in 2021. The latter was on this year’s jury, led by the 2022 Palme d’Or laureate Ruben Östlund.

Triet was presented the Palme by Jane Fonda, who recalled coming to Cannes in 1963 when, she said, there were no female filmmakers competing “and it never even occurred to us that there was something wrong with that.” 

A gripping psychothriller, “Anatomy of a Fall” stars Sandra Hüller as a successful writer trying to prove her innocence in her husband’s death. It was co-written by Triet’s partner Arthur Harari, who caused a stir in Cannes two years ago with his epic war movie “Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle”.


Le palmarès du festival de Cannes 2023. AFP – LOIC VENANCE

 

Accepting the award, Triet took aim at the government of French President Emmanuel Macron in a fiery message to the audience of films stars and industry professionals gathered inside Cannes’ Grand Théâtre Lumière – and the millions watching live on television. 

“The country suffered from historic protests over the reform of the pension system,” she said of the protest movement that has roiled France through much of this year. “These protests were denied, repressed in a shocking way.”

She added: “The commercialisation of culture that this neoliberal government supports is in the process of breaking France’s cultural exception, without which I wouldn’t be here today.”

That did not go down well with the country’s culture minister, Rima Abdul Malak, who promptly tweeted her “dismay” at Triet’s words. 

Demonstrations were banned from the area around the Palais des Festivals this year, though that did not stop French unions from staging several protests nearby – including a rare rally outside the iconic Carlton, the Riviera town’s most famous palace hotel.

Chilling Auschwitz drama takes ‘Grand Prix’ award

The Palme d’Or competition saw Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest”, also starring Hüller, take the second-place Grand Prix award. A chilling look at the idyllic family life of a German officer stationed at the Nazi death camp, it is based on the eponymous novel by Martin Amis, whose death was announced just days after the Cannes premiere.

Finlands Aki Kaurismaki completed the podium by taking the third-place Jury Prize for his Helsinki-set deadpan comedy “Fallen Leaves”, a favourite of festivalgoers.


Among the other awards, French director Tran Anh Hung won the prestigious Best Director honour for his lush “The Pot-au-Feu” (La Passion de Dodin-Bouffant), a tale of middle-age love and culinary delight, reuniting former real-life partners Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel. The surprise award comes exactly half a century after the ultimate arthouse food-porn movie, Marco Ferreri’s “La Grande Bouffe”, nearly caused a riot on the Croisette.

Japan’s Sakamoto Yuji took Best Screenplay for “Monster”, the latest exploration of dysfunctional families by the 2018 Palme d’Or laureate Hirokazu Kore-eda. That film also bagged the unofficial Queer Palm, an honour bestowed by journalists for the festival’s strongest LGBTQ-themed film. 

Fellow Japanese Koji Yakusho won the Best Actor award for his turn as a Tokyo toilet cleaner in Wim Wenders’ gentle gem “Perfect Days”, while Best Actress went to Merve Dizdar for her part in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s slow-burner “About Dry Grasses”, a school drama about a teacher whose career is imperilled by a sexual abuse charge, set in western Anatolia

“I understand what it’s like to be a woman in this area of the country,” said Dizdar as she accepted the award. “I would like to dedicate this prize to all the women who are fighting to exist and overcome difficulties in this world and to retrain hope.”

Merve Dizdar, winner of the Best Actress award for her turn in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's
Merve Dizdar, winner of the Best Actress award for her turn in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “About Dry Grasses”. © Vianney Le Caer, Invision, AP

Hers was one of several powerful female characters that made this a vintage year for women – on either side of the camera.

Stars, controversies and a Tarantino masterclass

The 76th Cannes Film Festival witnessed a number of modest breakthroughs for the world’s premier movie gathering, most notably in the number of women directors and the abundance of African films on display, many of them by newcomers to the festival circuit.

The stifling burden of patriarchal oppression underpinned two ground-breaking competition entries from Senegal and Tunisia. One was Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s “Banel & Adama”, a tale of frustrated love with echoes of Romeo and Juliet. The other was Kaouther Ben Hania’s “Four Daughters” (“Les Filles d’Olfa”), an experimental docu-drama based on the real story of a family ripped apart by the the onset of jihadist militancy.

For all the talk of a welcome shift towards greater diversity, this year’s edition also featured an impressive array of old-guard veterans, from 80-year-old Martin Scorsese to 86-year-old Ken Loach, who enjoyed a record 15th shot at the Palme d’Or with what was in all likelihood his final film.

Scorsese provided one of the festival’s red-carpet highlights with his “Killers of the Flower Moon”, starring fellow travellers Robert De Niro and Leonardo Di Caprio in a grim Western that exhumed a dark chapter in America’s past. It was one of several period dramas to screen in Cannes, bringing to the fore the characters (mainly women) who were left out of the history books.

Encore in Cannes: Leonardo Di Caprio, Martin Scorsese & Robert de Niro on the red carpet.
Encore in Cannes: Leonardo Di Caprio, Martin Scorsese & Robert de Niro on the red carpet. © AFP (Loïc Venance)

 

The festival’s journey into the past began with Maïwenn’s curtain-raiser “Jeanne du Barry”, about French king Louis XV’s scandalous relationship with a lowly courtesan, starring Johnny Depp as the monarch in a high-profile comeback that generated plenty of controversy.

Brazil’s Karim Aïnouz paid tribute to the resilience of Catherine Parr in his thrilling “Firebrand”, starring Alicia Vikander as the last of Henry VIII’s six wives, though it was unfortunate to see his heroine upstaged by an uproarious Jude Law as the paranoid and bloodthirsty English king.

Another period drama that was widely acclaimed – but left without a prize – was Marco Bellocchio’s “Kidnapped”, the harrowing tale of a young Jew who was abducted by papal authorities on the eve of Italy’s independence.

Bellocchio was one of three Italian directors in the main competition, all of whom left empty-handed. Another was Alice Rohrwacher, whose absorbing “La Chimera” starred Josh O’Connor as an archaeologist-turned-tomb-raider.

Speaking of archaeologists, Harrison Ford revived his “Indiana Jones” character for one last crack of the whip. The 80-year-old Hollywood was visibly emotional as he picked up an honorary Palme d’Or for his long and distinguished career.

There was also time for a Quentin Tarantino masterclass, which saw the 1994 Palme d’Or laureate delight his many Riviera fans with a lengthy chat about his first steps as a movie buff and his taste for violence in films – provided no animals get hurt.

Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival © Studio graphique France Médias Monde



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Cannes serves up a parade of ageing maestros and a Tarantino masterclass

From our special correspondent in Cannes – The final stretch of the world’s premier film festival has seen Cannes roll out the red carpet for a cavalcade of veteran auteurs, including two-time Palme d’Or laureate Ken Loach, past winners Wim Wenders and Nanni Moretti, and fellow Italian Marco Bellocchio, whose magnificent “Kidnapped” joined the list of frontrunners for this year’s top award. Meanwhile, the 1994 laureate Quentin Tarantino delighted his Riviera fans with a lengthy chat about his taste for violence in movies – provided no animals get hurt.

The 76th Cannes Film Festival has witnessed a number of modest breakthroughs for the world’s premier movie gathering, most notably in the abundance of African films on display and the number of women directors competing for the coveted Palme d’Or.

Italy’s Alice Rohrwacher wrapped up that contest on Friday with her latest folk tale “La Chimera”, about Italian tomb raiders who hunt ancient graves to find artefacts to sell. It followed the premiere of French director Catherine Breillat’s new erotic thriller “Last Summer”, centred on the fallout from a woman’s relationship with her stepson.

But for all the talk of a welcome shift towards greater diversity, this year’s edition has also featured an impressive array of old-guard veterans, from 80-year-old Martin Scorsese to 86-year-old Loach, who is having a record 15th shot at the Palme d’Or.

 


 

The veteran Briton first won at Cannes in 2006 for his Irish civil war drama “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”, before repeating the feat 10 years later with “I, Daniel Blake”. His latest entry “The Old Oak”, which he has described as his last, is about an English pub struggling to survive amid tensions caused by the arrival of Syrian refugees.

Other silver foxes this year included 77-year-old Wim Wenders, the 1984 Palme laureate for “Paris, Texas”, whose “Perfect Days” – about a Tokyo toilet cleaner – was widely hailed as a gem. Critics, however, were distinctly harsher with another festival darling, Moretti, whose “A Brighter Tomorrow” was described by some as a dud.

Hidden histories

Outside the main competition, the revered Spanish director Victor Erice made his long-awaited return to Cannes at 82 with the highly rated “Close Your Eyes”, a meditation on memory and ageing, while fellow octogenarian Martin Scorsese provided one of the festival’s red-carpet highlights with his “Killers of the Flower Moon”, starring fellow travellers Robert De Niro and Leonardo Di Caprio.

A grim Western, Scorsese’s movie exhumed a dark chapter in America’s past, focusing on serial murders among the oil-rich Osage tribe in the early 20th century. It was one of several period dramas to screen in Cannes this year – some shedding light on little-known episodes from history, others bringing to the fore the characters (mainly women) who were left out of the history books.

 


Encore in Cannes: Leonardo Di Caprio, Martin Scorsese & Robert de Niro on the red carpet. © AFP (Loïc Venance)

 

The festival’s journey into the past began with Maïwenn’s curtain-raiser “Jeanne du Barry”, about French king Louis XV’s scandalous relationship with a lowly courtesan, starring Johnny Depp as the monarch in a high-profile comeback that generated plenty of controversy.

Brazil’s Karim Aïnouz paid tribute to the resilience of Catherine Parr in his thrilling “Firebrand”, starring Alicia Vikander as the last of Henry VIII’s six wives, though it was unfortunate to see his heroine upstaged by an uproarious Jude Law as the paranoid and bloodthirsty English king.

Two other period dramas caused a stir at the Riviera film gathering, joining the frontrunners in this year’s race for the Palme d’Or. One was Jonathan Glazer’s Auschwitz-set “The Zone of Interest”, a chilling look at the idyllic family life of a German officer stationed at the Nazi death camp. The other was Marco Bellocchio’s “Kidnapped”, the harrowing tale of a young Jew who was abducted by papal authorities in the 1850s, on the eve of Italy’s independence.

A sinister Vatican tale

“Kidnapped” is based on the true story of Edgardo Mortara, a 6-year-old Jewish boy from Bologna who was taken from his parents and raised in the Catholic faith on the grounds that his maid had baptised him in secret. His appalling story, which eventually became a cause célèbre of the liberal camp in the nascent Italian state, was far from isolated.

Historians have documented numerous cases of forceful conversions of Jewish children, a practice encouraged by widespread antisemitism in the Church. In Mortara’s case, the family’s strenuous efforts to recover their son eventually led to a national scandal and a trial, involving the pope himself in a rear-guard battle to uphold religious dogma and the Vatican’s privileges.

 


 

“The dislocation of the Papal States”, which Bologna was then part of, provides the backdrop to “Kidnapped”, turning the Mortara family’s private tragedy into a political tussle, Bellocchio told a press conference in Cannes. His film is also a deeply troubling study of child abuse, detailing how the young Edgardo’s extensive brainwashing led him to become a priest and a lifelong partisan of the Church.

The 83-year-old Italian director, whose 2002 Cannes entry “My Mother’s Smile” was banned in Church-owned Italian cinemas, insisted that his latest work was not an “anti-clerical” statement. At the festival presser he said it was “not a film against the pope or the Catholic Church, but against intolerance.”

Tarantino’s masterclass

A fixture of the Palme d’Or contest, Bellocchio is yet to win a prize in Cannes – aside from the career award he picked up two years ago for his lifetime achievements. His lack of success here stands in stark contrast with that of another Cannes stalwart, Quentin Tarantino, who showed up for a masterclass on Thursday before an ecstatic crowd of several hundred, packed inside the Théâtre de la Croisette.

The superstar director of “Pulp Fiction”, who won the Palme at his first attempt in 1994, is currently at work on what could be his final feature film. His Cannes talk came two months after the release of his book, “Cinema Speculation”, in which he recounts his first steps as a film buff and details his love of the movies.

Tarantino kicked off the talk with a surprise screening of John Flynn’s “Rolling Thunder”, an obscure movie about a Vietnam veteran pursuing the criminals who killed his family – which he introduced as “the greatest revenge flick of all time”. With its gun-blast violence, lyrical badmouth, and cathartic final bloodbath in a Mexican bordello, it had all the hallmarks of a Tarantino favourite.

 

The poster for Quentin Tarantino's masterclass at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes.
The poster for Quentin Tarantino’s masterclass at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. © David Rich

 

The screening of “Rolling Thunder” was a chance for the filmmaker to reflect on his approach to on-screen violence, a subject he touched on in his book, describing how his mother would take him to the movies as a young boy and let him watch violent films – as long as the violence was contextualised and “understood”.  

Morality should not dictate the aesthetics of a film, Tarantino argued at the Cannes talk. The most important thing is to “electrify the audience”, he added, quoting American director Don Siegel. He did, however, draw a red line at on-set violence against animals, noting that “killing animals for real in a film (…) has been done a lot in European and Asian films”. The taboo applied to insects too, he quipped, eliciting laughter from the audience.

“I’m not paying to see death for real. We’re here to pretend, which is why I can put up with all this violence,” he explained. “We’re just being silly, we’re just kids playing, it’s not real blood and nobody gets hurt.”

A final film?

Tarantino also asserted his preference for edgy and divisive directors, as well as those – like Flynn from “Rolling Thunder” – who never got the credit they deserved.

“Everyone loves Spielberg and Scorsese, there was no question of me joining the club of the most popular guys, that’s not my style!” he said, echoing a theme he mined in his book, in which he detailed his love for Brian De Palma’s more divisive movies. “Part of my love for De Palma came from the possibility of getting into trouble defending him, sometimes to the point of coming to blows,” he added.

 

Quentin Tarantino arrives for his masterclass in Cannes.
Quentin Tarantino arrives for his masterclass in Cannes. © Delphine Pincet

 

Touching on his last Cannes entry, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (2019), Tarantino said his primary motivation for making the film was to “avenge” Sharon Tate, the actress who was brutally murdered by members of the ‘Manson Family’ in the 1970s, by imagining an alternative ending to the tragedy.

He was distinctly less chatty when quizzed about his new project, the forthcoming film “The Movie Critic”, billed as another ode to cinema. “I’m tempted to give you some of the characters’ monologues right now. But I’m not going to do that, no, no,” he teased the audience. “Maybe if there were fewer cameras.”

Tarantino has repeatedly suggested his tenth feature film is likely to be his last, based on his belief that filmmakers only have a limited number of good films in them. Whether or not he quits as a director, the conversation about movies will go on, he added, wrapping up the talk with a simple, “To be continued”.

Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival © Studio graphique France Médias Monde

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Scandal at the palace: Cannes 2023 kicks off with Johnny Depp’s royal comeback

The 76th Cannes Film Festival kicked off on Tuesday with the red-carpet premiere of French director Maïwenn’s historical drama “Jeanne du Barry”, about French king Louis XV’s scandalous relationship with a lowly courtesan, starring Johnny Depp as the monarch in a high-profile comeback that has generated plenty of controversy.

Scandal is a clichéd word in Cannes, commonly slapped onto just about anything that causes a stir on and off the screen.

There are the many sexist scandals, of course, such as the 2016 “Heelgate” controversy that saw women in flat shoes barred from the red carpet. That was followed a year later by the controversial airbrushing of Claudia Cardinale on the official poster for the 70th festival edition.

Naturally, the movies have sparked their fair share of clamour. Four years ago, Abdellatif Kechiche’s sexually-explicit, three-hour-long nightclub extravaganza “Mektoub my Love: Intermezzo” triggered a walkout by the lead actress during its gala premiere. The film has since vanished from the radars, still unreleased.

Other, older fracas are now part of Cannes folklore. They include the uproar that followed the unsimulated fellatio in Vincent Gallo’s “The Brown Bunny” (2003) or the gorging-to-death in Marco Ferreri’s “La Grande Bouffe” (1973), which saw people spit on the director as he exited the screening and jury president Ingrid Bergman reportedly throw up.

Fifty years on, another Swede – two-time Palme d’Or laureate Ruben Ostlund – heads the jury of the festival’s 76th edition, which opened on Tuesday with the screening of Maïwenn’s “Jeanne du Barry”, about an explosive scandal that roiled the court of Versailles in the 18th century.

It stars Johnny Depp as the French king Louis XV in his first role since his short-lived marriage with actress Amber Heard was raked over in lurid detail during a defamation trial in the United States.


 

Depp, 59, was feted by fans as he arrived at the Palais des Festivals, sporting a ponytail and shades. He spent several minutes schmoozing with the crowd, posing for selfies and signing autographs, before heading up the film world’s most famous red carpet for the gala premiere of Maïwenns curtain-raiser.

‘Impunity’

The film revolves around the king’s tumultuous relationship with his final mistress Jeanne du Barry, played by Maïwenn, a commoner and courtesan whose admission to the gilded palace of Versailles naturally causes an almighty scandal.

Depp signed up for the role of Louis XV before the start of a legal battle with his ex-wife involving bitter accusations of domestic violence that threatened to derail his career. He has since been axed from Harry Potter spin-off “Fantastic Beasts” following Heard’s abuse allegations, though he is a long way from being “cancelled”.   

The US star long beloved of the French has secured a record $20 million deal to remain the face of Dior fragrance, according to Variety last week. He is also set to direct Al Pacino in a biopic of artist Amedeo Modigliani later this year. Still, the decision to hand his comeback movie pride of place at Cannes has inevitably raised eyebrows.

In remarks to the press on Monday, Cannes director Thierry Frémaux defended the choice, praising Depp’s part in the film and saying he paid no attention to the trial. “To tell you the truth, in my life, I only have one rule, it’s the freedom of thinking, the freedom of speech and the freedom to act within a legal framework,” said Frémaux. “If Johnny Depp had been banned from acting in a film, or the film was banned, we wouldn’t be here talking about it.”

Johnny Depp pictured on the red carpet for the Cannes premiere of Maïwenn’s “Jeanne du Barry”. © Joel C Ryan, AP

Although the film is playing out of competition, members of the Palme d’Or jury were also asked about Depp’s presence during their traditional opening press conference. Outspoken MeToo supporter Brie Larson, star of “Captain Marvel”, looked flustered as she took a question on the subject, curtly replying: “I don’t know how I feel about it”.

Depp’s fall from grace is not the only controversy surrounding “Jeanne du Barry”, whose director has been a critic of the MeToo movement, once stating: “I hope men will catcall me in the street for the rest of my life”.

In March, a well-known French journalist, Edwy Plenel of the investigative news website Mediapart, lodged a criminal complaint for assault against Maïwenn, accusing her of approaching him in a restaurant, grabbing him by the hair and spitting in his face.

Maïwenn has admitted the assault in an interview on French TV, without going into details. Plenel said it may have been motivated by articles about the rape allegations surrounding Maïwenn’s ex-husband and father of one of her children, director Luc Besson (“The Fifth Element”), whom she married aged 16.

Her Cannes curtain-raiser comes just days after prominent actress Adèle Haenel (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”), a French icon of MeToo, announced she was giving up movie acting to “denounce the general complacency in our industry towards sexual abusers”. It prompted a group of 123 French film industry workers to denounce the festival in an open letter published by Liberation newspaper on Monday.

“By rolling out the red carpet to men and women who commit assaults, the festival demonstrates that violence in creative circles can be exercised with complete impunity,” read the article, whose signatories include Julie Gayet and Laure Calamy among other prominent actors.

Back to Versailles

Still only 47, Maïwenn already has a distinguished record at the world’s premier film shindig, having won the Jury Prize in 2011 with her breakthrough film “Polisse”. Four years later, her follow-up feature “My King” earned Emmanuelle Bercot a best actress award.

ENCORE!
ENCORE! © FRANCE 24

 

A grand costume affair shot on 35mm film in the Palace of Versailles, “Jeanne du Barry” signals a radical change of scale and style for the French filmmaker, whose $20 million movie was part-funded by Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Foundation. Its classicism is as rigid as the court protocol of Versailles, shirking the naturalism and improvisation that characterised her past work.

The film is also bizarrely chaste, limiting the famously libertine king’s last passionate love affair to playful giggles, adoring gazes and the odd kiss.

In a world where “gallantry” and rape are scarcely distinguishable, choosing to be a libertine “is one way of being a woman and also of being free”, says the voice-over narrator early on in the film, describing Jeanne du Barry as a “daughter of nothing, ready to do anything”.

Depp, who was previously married to French star Vanessa Paradis, gives a solid physical performance, though his dialogue is kept to short phrases that help disguise his American accent. Benjamin Lavernhe plays his stoic valet La Borde, while India Hair excels as the king’s daughter Adélaïde, hell-bent on expelling the “scandal” her father allowed into the royal palace.

There’s also Melvil Poupaud in the role of Jeanne’s earlier lover and pimp, the charming and ruthlessly self-serving Comte du Barry, though his and other parts remain underdeveloped in a film that is entirely absorbed with its titular character.

Maïwenn has described the film as the fulfilment of a 17-year dream. She said her interest in Jeanne du Barry came from watching Sofia Coppola’s Versailles-set “Marie Antoinette” (2006), in which Asia Argento played Louis XV’s mistress.

Like Coppola’s lush art album, “Jeanne du Barry” is set in a cocoon, a self-contained world of indulgence, lavish costumes and architectural wonder that shuts out the external world. But it lacks the boldness and inventiveness that powered “Marie Antoinette”.

It also lacks the deeply moving intimacy of Albert Serra’s haunting “The Death of Louis XIV” (2016), starring New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud in an absorbing, candle-lit account of the Sun King’s final days in the palace he built.

A witty, working-class woman hungry for culture and pleasure, Jeanne du Barry is undoubtedly a more interesting character than poor-little-rich-girl Marie-Antoinette. But while Maïwenn’s own fascination with Louis XV’s favourite mistress is all too obvious on the screen, the film doesn’t quite make it contagious.

Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival © Studio graphique France Médias Monde

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