A wave of a thousand victims places a face to French Me Too within the brief movie by actress Julie Godrèche | Culture | EUROtoday

When the Me Too motion broke out in 2017 following complaints in opposition to Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, there was one nation that didn’t conceal its misgivings: France. In a public letter, greater than 100 ladies from the world of tradition, some as well-known because the actress Catherine Deneuve, expressed their reservations concerning the collateral results of the complaints coming from the United States. That advanced debate ended up being simplistic, turning American ladies into puritans in comparison with the extra decided European ladies, a false dichotomy that seven years later has been definitively settled. Me Too has arrived late in France however with an amplified drive firstly of the 77th version of the Cannes competition, which has tried in useless lately to stay on the sidelines of a historic motion that shouldn’t be restricted to the world of cinema.

Me too (Me Too) is a 17-minute brief movie directed by actress Judith Godrèche whose relevance is extra social than cinematic. It was proven as a prologue to the inaugural movie—the Icelandic Refraction of sunshine, by Rúnar Rúnarsson—from the part A sure look and responds, in line with Godrèche, to the promise she made to the 5 thousand victims who contacted her between February 7 of this 12 months, when the actress reported that she was raped and assaulted as a youngster by the administrators Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon, who deny the information, and on March 23, the date on which she summoned all of the individuals who linked together with her by the e-mail that she enabled shortly after making her title public. sexual assault. Of the 5 thousand, a couple of thousand attended the assembly, most of them ladies, of all ages and situations.

The brief movie begins with a shot of some eyes, these of Tess Barthélémy, the director's daughter, who wearing white walks among the many individuals who wrote to Godrèche sharing their horrible testimonies. Barthélémy performs a considerably easy choreography that performs with the eyes that don’t see and the mouth that continues to be silent whereas he hugs or shakes fingers with the victims and a polyphony of voices is heard that recount their sexual abuses, lots of them inside the scope household, once they have been minors, and others, as adults, within the office. “My uncle”, “A friend of my father”, “My brother”, “My boss”, “A famous actor”, “A stranger”… “at six years old”, “at eight”, “ at 13″, “at 15…” Some of the ladies filmed conceal their faces with the hood of their coats, or with sun shades, others, the older ones, flip their backs to the digicam, however the majority look head on.

Godrèche's concept is saved when the music, phrases and dance are turned off and the thousand individuals silently stroll down the avenue of Paris in a sequence shot through which they parade in entrance of the lens. That lengthy second starring a crowd with its heads held excessive is resounding and thrilling. Godrèche has turn out to be the principle promoter of a motion that began in France when the actress Adèle Haenel left the 2020 César Awards as an indication of protest for the applause for the filmmaker Roman Polanski, who was then awarded for The officer and the spyhis movie concerning the well-known I accuse by Émile Zola and the Dreyfus case.

A number of days in the past, Godrèche was requested about some considerably clumsy statements by actor Vincent Lindon, who requested for “a roadmap” to raised perceive ladies victims of sexual assault. The actress responded with fun that Lindon's phrase reveals the depths of so many males, his incapacity to place himself of their footwear.

Something that, curiously, the American actress Meryl Streep repeated yesterday in a gathering with the general public through which she reviewed some moments of her profession: “No man who sees The hunter [la película de 1978 de Michael Cimino] He identifies with me, with the girl. On the other hand, women do identify with the characters of [Robert] De Niro or John Savage. That is what is difficult, for a man to look at a woman and finally find out something about her.”

The exhibiting of Godrèche's brief movie was repeated two hours in a while the seashore, within the explicit sand and solar lounger stalls within the Cinéma de La Plage programme, Gregorio Belinchón experiences. The actress did go on stage that point with a part of the staff. She was accompanied within the session, within the first rows of lounge chairs, by fifty contributors in Me too, who repeatedly coated their mouths in a gesture that replicated the pictures within the brief, and which Godrèche praised, in a voice damaged by emotion, “the bravery” of these victims. At the tip of the session, the director spoke once more with a nervous chortle: “It's good to also dedicate the beach to this cinema.” And calmer, she completed: “Thank you to everyone who trusted me. “This is for them.”

Meanwhile, the snowball of French Me Too has not stopped rising. In October, certainly one of its sacred cows, the actor Gérard Depardieu, will sit on the bench, whereas the producer Alain Sarde, 72, one of the crucial highly effective within the French trade (he’s behind movies by Godard, Claude Sautet, Polanski, André Téchiné or Bertrand Tavernier) was accused two days in the past by 9 ladies who accused him of assaults that occurred between 1985 and 2003, which he denies.

Furthermore, the newspaper The world At the beginning of the competition, it additionally revealed a discussion board signed by 100 ladies, most of them well-known actresses, from Juliette Binoche to Isabelle Adjani, who demand a complete legislation in opposition to sexual and gender violence that protects ladies, males and youngsters equally. “a law that clarifies, among other things, the definition of rape and consent […] We are not pursuing a utopia, there are so many of us that our voices can no longer stop counting.”

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