French actress Judith Godrèche denounces two filmmakers for raping her as an adolescent | Culture | EUROtoday

That the French filmmaker Benoît Jacquot appreciated teenage ladies and that he took benefit of his place of energy and status with them was no secret. He himself had spoken in public concerning the relationship that he had between 1986 and 1992 with the actress Judith Godrèche and that started when she was an adolescent. “In view of the law, you don't have a right in principle, I think. She was 15 and I was 40. I didn't care and I would even say that she was very excited about it,” he mentioned with a half smile in a 2011 documentary.

Two years later, Jacquot would acquire three César awards, the French equal of the Goya, for Farewells to the Queen. He was not a top-notch director, however he was a consecrated and admired determine. All so as. Until now.

Godrèche, who’s now 51 years outdated, has damaged his silence. After releasing a tv sequence on the finish of 2023 through which he recounted a part of this stage of his life, this week he denounced the filmmaker for rape. He has additionally denounced one other director of the identical technology as Jacquot, Jacques Doillon, writer, amongst different movies of The 15 12 months outdated woman. Godrèche has opened the floodgates to accusations from different actresses in opposition to each administrators on the earth of French cinema, seven years after the beginning of the Me Too motion. en EU.

“It is a story like the stories of kidnapped children who grow up without seeing the world and who cannot think badly of their kidnapper,” reads one textual content, quoted by The world and that Godrèche ready earlier than denouncing Jacquot on February 7. “I would have wanted Benoît to agree to be my friend, no having me, I didn't want his body. Right away she disgusted me.”

That identical day, she reported Doillon for 2 episodes of sexual abuse. One throughout the filming of The 15 12 months outdated woman, and in entrance of the cameras, the movie crews and Doillon's then accomplice, who along with directing additionally acted. “Suddenly, he decides that there is a love scene, a sex scene between him and me,” Godrèche defined on Thursday on the France Inter community. “I take off my sweater, I'm left bare-chested, he rubs me, he rubs me.” The second episode, within the Parisian house that Doillon shared along with his accomplice on the time, the actress and singer Jane Birkin.

Jacquot, in an interview with The world, denied the accusations and defended that the connection with the actress had been purely loving. The age of sexual majority, on the time of the reported occasions, was 15 years and the filmmaker maintains that, though they started to be a pair when she was 14 and he was 39, they didn’t have sexual relations till she turned 15. “And not for lack of desire,” he informed the aforementioned newspaper. Godrèche says she was 14, so it will have been unlawful.

Doillon informed Agence France Presse: “That Judith Godrèche and, through her, other women decide to denounce a system, an era, a society, is brave, laudable and necessary. But the justness of the cause does not authorize arbitrary denunciations, false accusations and lies.” Neither Jacquot nor Doillon are charged and for now the Prosecutor's Office has opened preliminary investigations. The info have most likely expired.

Godrèche met Jacquot in 1986, when the filmmaker chosen the actress for the movie I encourage thems. within the sequence Icon of french cinemawritten, directed and starring Godrèche, and premiered in December on the ARTE community, the scene of the casting. “Do you have a little friend?” the director asks the woman. “You remind me of Balthus's heroines,” she tells him at one other level, alluding to the painter who portrayed younger girls.

In six chapters of half an hour every, and in a tone between mild and melancholic, the sequence tells all of it, or nearly. It is the story of a fallen French actress who returns to Paris after a couple of years in Los Angeles. The story alternates between her present life and her life as a teenage actress underneath the affect of an grownup director. Like the Judith of the sequence, the actual Judith was the daughter of divorced dad and mom who didn’t set limits for her. “Why did you let me go with a 40-year-old man?” her mom asks. There's no reply.

In The world, Godrèche describes Jacquot as a violent man. When she was 17, he needed to purchase an residence within the Marais, a central neighborhood in Paris, however she didn't find the money for. She then obtained authorized emancipation from her father to make use of her financial savings and have the ability to purchase the residence collectively. It was a dependency relationship, in response to her testimony: “I was completely isolated. “I had separated myself from all social life.”

“It was as if I was locked up, I had to ask Benoît's permission for everything, even for him to spend Christmas with me,” the mom tells the aforementioned newspaper. “And she was still a child: she had a stuffed animal.” In the identical report, Jacquot defends himself: “I was trapped by her. No irony: I'm the one who was under her influence for six. I think if he hadn't left, I would still be with her today.”

Regarding the alleged abuse dedicated by Doillon throughout the filming of The 15 12 months outdated woman, Godrèche declared: “It was amazing.” She was, just like the protagonist, 15 years outdated. He, over 40. Jane Birkin was additionally on the set, who wrote in her diaries: “I kissed Judith Godrèche 20 times in a row and asked me which was the best take. A real agony!”

Around the identical time, Birkin's ex-partner, Serge Gainsbourg, was in a relationship with a lady he had met when he was 57 and she or he was 16. Her identify was Constance Meyer and she or he would inform it years later in a e-book. “I fell in love with an older man, but it was legal,” she Meyer informed EL PAÍS. “He had no influence on me. There is no problem.”

Godrèche was one of many actresses who in 2017 reported an tried rape by American producer Harvey Weinstein and thus contributed to beginning the Me Too motion. She mentioned that when studying in 2020 The consent, by Vanessa Springora, realized that it informed her expertise. Springora recounted how she was seduced, concurrently the occasions reported by Godrèche, by the author Gabriel Matzneff. She was 14 years outdated; he, 50. Matzneff loved the aura of the author; Jacquot, by the filmmaker.

“In a certain way, filmmaking is a kind of cover for this type of customs, in the sense that you have cover for illicit trafficking: 'Ah, the filmmaker is an artist, he is making an artist, these are his things. …”, mentioned Jacquot within the 2011 documentary. “And at the same time, in the film world you can notice that there is a certain esteem or admiration for what others would like to practice as well. There is something of this too, which is not unpleasant.”

The director of the documentary, the media psychoanalyst Gérard Miller, has been accused by 18 girls within the journal Elle of sexual assaults. Miller denies this.

_