Fresh controversy is brewing in the French film industry just weeks after a bombshell documentary detailing sexual assault accusations against Gérard Depardieu divided its ranks.
In what promises to be another divisive affair, actress Judith Godrèche has publicly condemned the relationship she openly had with director Benoît Jacquot in the late 1980s, which she says began when she was only 14 years old and he was 40.
Godrèche said this week that she was “under his influence” and that the relationship was wrong.
Jacquot – whose films as director include 2015 drama Diary Of A Chambermaid, Farewell, My Queen and Casanova, Last Love – has always held that Godrèche was 15, the minimum age of consent in France.
Godrèche, who is now 51, lived with Jacquot for six years and appeared in his films The Beggars and The Disenchanted, before leaving him in her early 20s.
She went on to build a successful career as an actress at home and recently returned to France after a stint living in L.A., and has since made her TV directorial debut with the A24-backed drama series Icons Of French Cinema inspired by her life.
Godrèche first began publicly revisiting her experiences with Jacquot, without naming him directly, during the press campaign for the show.
The actress said her own daughter Tess Barthélemy’s adolescence had brought home the problematic nature of her own relationship as a teenager.
“If a 40-year-old man approached my daughter, I would kill him,” she said in an interview with Elle magazine in December.
“Because I now have an adolescent daughter, I’ve realized what happened to me… I was navigating a world without rules or laws alone.”
Cinema world
The actress questioned the behavior of the cinema world at the time which turned a blind eye to the relationship.
She spoke of an incident at the Locarno Film Festival where she got drunk as a teen to the point of falling over after being plied with wine.
“I ask myself now, whether the adults were saying to themselves: ‘There’s a problem. She’s too young. What is she doing here?’,” she told Elle.
Godrèche finally named Jacquot in a series of social media posts on Saturday (January 6).
“The little girl in me can no longer stay quiet,” she wrote in an Instagram Story which has since disappeared. “He is called Benoît Jacquot… He still manipulates those who might associate their names with mine. Bear witness. He threatens to take me to court for defamation.”
Godrèche said she had felt compelled to name the director after being sent an extract from the 2011 documentary Les Ruses du Désir : L’interdit by Gérard Miller in which Jacquot discussed their former relationship.
“It’s definitely a transgression, at least in the eyes of the law… a girl like her, this Judith who was 15 years old, while I was 40, I don’t think I had the right. But so what? I didn’t care and, for her, I would say it excited her a lot,” he said in the interview.
“The fact is that, in a certain way, cinema was a kind of cover, in the sense that we have a cover for this or that illicit traffic… these types of morals,” he added.
“I vomited”
Speaking on evening chat show Quotidien two days after her social media posts, Godrèche said that Jacquot’s words had made her sick.
“Seeing myself transformed into an object and being talked about like a thing, rather than speaking for myself. I vomited. I was in a state of panic,” she said.
“There was no consent. Consent does not exist at 14. You’re not excited at 14 about sleeping with a 40-year-old guy,” she continued.
“He reverses the roles. He projects his excitement onto me. He sexualizes me. I experienced this sexualization, I was there. To hear him speak like that in 2011, be able to use those words in a very worldly way, laughing, bragging. There’s such impunity. It’s the pleasure of a monster.”
Jacquot, who is currently in post-production of George Simenon-adaptation Belle starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Guillaume Canet, has yet to comment publicly about Godrèche’s recent condemnation of their relationship. We’ve reached out to the filmmaker for comment.
Battle
Godrèche’s public outcry comes as the French film world is currently locked in an intergenerational battle over the allegations of inappropriate behavior by Depardieu.
Depardieu has been under scrutiny for some time in the wake of an official complaint of rape against him by actress Charlotte Arnould and an in-depth report by investigative website Mediapart in April 2023 which detailed 13 accusations of sexual assault.
For the first time, members of France’s traditionally tightly-lipped and permissive film world have started to criticize the iconic actor’s behaviour. Among those to speak out have been Sophie Marceau, Anouk Grinberg, Ariane Labeb, Clothilde Hesme and Lucie Lucas.
The affair sparked two film world petitions: one in support of Depardieu, signed by an older generation of actors such Caroline Bouquet, Charlotte Rampling and Nathalie Baye, and a counter-petition, mainly signed by younger artists across the entertainment world, decrying the defense of the actor.
French President Emmanuel Macron has also waded into the debate, suggesting Depardieu was the subject a witch-hunt and saying he was a “great admirer” of the actor who “had made France proud.”
For now, few big figures from the cinema world have passed public comment on Godrèche’s outcry, even if she has received support on social networks from the public.
The French film industry’s embrace of the #MeToo movement has been lukewarm until now.
Adèle Haenel, who was one of the first French actresses to blow the #MeToo whistle in 2019 when she accused director Christophe Ruggia of sexually harassing her as a minor, announced last year that she was stepping away from the industry due to its “general complacency… towards sexual abusers.”
It remains to be seen whether Godrèche’s stand and the backlash against Depardieu mark a #MeToo turning point for France some six years after the movement first took hold in the U.S.
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Source: DLine
