The trial of Gerard Depardieu was as much farce as it was tragedy.
As France grabbles with its own #MeToo moment and a parliamentary commission examines abuse and violence against women in the country’s arts industries, the country’s biggest film star appeared in a courtroom in Paris last week to face allegations he sexually assaulted two women on the set of the film Les Volets verts (The Green Shutters) in 2021.
The tragedy came from the women’s testimony — a set decorator who spoke of how Depardieu trapped her between his legs and groped her, an assistant director who detailed multiple occasions when the actor touched her breasts, buttocks, and genitals. The farce from Depardieu’s performance in court. In his testimony, the 76-year-old actor seemed to be performing a parody of toxic masculinity, admitting to shouting words like “Dick!” and “Pussy!” on set, “joking” that “it’s so hot in here, I can’t even get an erection,” but dismissing his actions as the equivalent of a child “saying wee wee, poo poo” and only something people in this “new world” of political correctness would be offended by.
At one point, Depardieu’s defense — the actor denies all charges against him — seemed to rely on his age and weight, with the actor suggesting “at 76 years old and 150 kilos (330 lbs)” he was in no shape to “have fun” with female colleagues. In one interaction, when he allegedly grabbed a woman by the hips, it was “so as not to slip,” Depardieu claimed. His belly, he said, was too big to pull a woman in “between my thighs.”
Depardieu told the court he loved women, but claimed the #MeToo movement was becoming “a terror,” citing the case of Roman Polanski, the Polish-born director who fled the U.S. for France decades ago after admitting to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old.
The Depardieu shtick — his public persona as a crude, working-class thug — was on full display. It was that rude charm, such a contrast to his polished Parisian contemporaries, that helped make the actor a rising star of French cinema in the late 70s in films like Bertrand Blier’s Going Places (1974), and rocketed him to international fame with Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 (1976), Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), and Peter Weir’s Green Card (1991), the latter earning him an Oscar nomination for best actor. But as assault allegations mount against him, the Depardieu persona appears to be wearing thin.
The prosecution brought multiple witnesses to testify to similar abuse at the hands of the seasoned star, who has over 200 screen credits to his name. A costume designer testified that, on a film set in 2014, she was adjusting a cape Depardieu was wearing, he “shoved me behind curtains, put his hands on my underwear, my tights, my groin, my breasts” telling her: “You know who I am. Let it happen. I’m an actor, I’ve got the right.” When senior production members were informed, the designer said, they decided not to make a fuss for a “little costume girl.”
A 30-year-old actress, who appeared with Depardieu in the French Netflix series Marseille, told the court that “everyone knew” about his bad behavior. She alleged Depardieu, on set, suddenly put his hand inside her shorts and underwear. When she pushed him away, he said: “What? I thought you wanted to succeed in cinema,” the woman claimed.
Depardieu’s character witness came in the form of star actress Fanny Ardant (Nathalie…, 8 Women) a long-time colleague and friend, who testified that she had “never witnessed an act that I would have found shocking” by Gérard Depardieu. What Ardant finds shocking seems a relatively high bar. She noted that she experienced similar things to that which Depardieu is accused of. “I’m a woman myself,” she noted, “I’ve been slapped, insulted. I know you can say no to Gérard.” But she acknowledged that “the world has changed, society has changed, the benchmarks are no longer the same, there are things that we tolerated and that are no longer tolerable.”
In his closing statement, the state prosecutor denounced Depardieu for a “total denial and failure to question himself.” A panel of three judges will give their verdict on May 13, coincidentally the first day of the Cannes Film Festival. The prosecution has asked the court to give Depardieu an 18-month suspended prison sentence. He potentially faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of up to €75,000 ($81,000).
The trial is not the first time that Depardieu has appeared in court on charges of sexual violence but it won’t be the last. French actress Charlotte Arnould, who attended last week’s trial, has accused Depardieu of having raped her twice in his private mansion in 2018. The case is ongoing. The actor is currently facing several other sexual assault complaints. More than 20 women have publicly accused him, in the press or before the courts, of sexual violence. He has denied all allegations.
Depardieu’s trial is only the latest in a series of #MeToo scandals and legal challenges that have rocked the French film world over the past few years, resulting in a sea change that feels long overdue for many industrial professionals.
Back in 2017, following the allegations against Harvey Weinstein, the journalist Sandra Muller created the hashtag #BalanceTonPorc (#SquealOnYourPig) in order to import the #MeToo movement to France. But her appeal was met with a backlash from seasoned French stars like Catherine Deneuve, who penned an op-ed in the national daily Le Monde defending the “freedom to flirt, which is indispensable for sexual freedom.” It was signed by 100 other renowned women, including actresses, directors, writers, and artists.
Nonetheless, the movement began to take hold of the industry. Starting in 2020, the CNC, which remains French cinema’s largest public funding body, introduced laws requiring any production benefiting from its financing to abide by new rules combatting “sexist and sexual harassment.” Producers applying for CNC monies were obliged to sit through training sessions dealing with inappropriate behavior on set, while a special legal and psychological committee was organized for victims.
At the César awards that February, actress Adèle Haenel walked out of the ceremony to protest Roman Polanski receiving the best director prize for An Officer and a Spy. The year before, she accused director Christophe Ruggia of sexually molesting her after she starred in his 2002 movie Devils as a teenager. Last month, Ruggia was sentenced by the Paris criminal court to a four-year jail term, with two years of home detention.
Young, outspoken, and refusing to work in what she claimed was an abusive industry — her last credit was Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which came out in 2019 — Haenel became an early figurehead of French cinema’s #MeToo movement.
Other actresses followed in her wake. Most notably Judith Godrèche, who accused veteran auteurs Jacques Doillon and Benoît Jacquot of raping her when she was 15. (Godrèche was also one of 93 women who accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault). The 53-year-old star became another spokesperson for the movement, often appearing in the media and directing a short film, entitled Me Too, which premiered in Cannes last year.
Even the CNC wasn’t immune from the #MeToo wave that swept through the industry. In 2021, its acting president Dominique Boutonnat was accused of attempted rape and sexual assault by his 22-year-old godson. Last February, he received a three-year prison sentence (two of them suspended) and immediately resigned from his post.
The new rules and conventions have begun to impact productions in an industry where abusive behavior often went unpunished. The most recent example was the 2023 shoot of the legal drama Je le jure (I Swear It), directed by Anatomy of a Fall co-star Samuel Theis. After a grip accused the director of sexual assault during a party, Theis was banned from the set and forced to make the rest of the movie via Zoom. Although a judge later decided not to indict the director, placing him under the status of temoin assisté (somewhere between a witness and a suspect), the producers vaunted the “safe space” they created for the rest of the crew so that the movie could be finished.
In October 2024, a parliamentary commission was created to investigate violence committed in the film, theatre, fashion, and advertising industries. Presided by Ecologist Group MP Sandrine Rousseau, it will publish its first report on April 9.
Interviewed by the HuffPost at the end of Depardieu’s trial, Rousseau lamented the star’s performance in court: “He’s an ogre playing a part,” she said. “And he’s a good actor, you can’t take that away from him. All of a sudden when he’s facing his victims, he becomes a fragile and vulnerable being.”
Depardieu currently remains the biggest name in French cinema to go to court in the wake of #MeToo. The fact that he was condemned for actions which, just a few years ago, would probably have been brushed aside by producers hoping to bank off his celebrity, shows how far the industry has come in a relatively short time.
Nobody was all that shocked by the trial of someone well known for his rampant licentiousness and hedonism, for his foul language and bad manners. What was surprising was how such an A-list star — and without a doubt the biggest name to ever grace the screen in France — was made to publicly answer for his treatment of two below-the-line female employees. If nothing else, the Depardieu trial demonstrated a long overdue, and welcome, shift in power within the French film business.
Read the full article here
