French prosecutors on Wednesday said they opened an inquiry after actor Judith Godreche filed a complaint against film director Benoit Jacquot, accusing him of raping her in a relationship that began when she was 14 and he was 25 years her senior.
Jacquot, one of France’s most prominent directors, denied the accusations in comments to the Le Monde newspaper, which also interviewed Godreche.
He declined to comment further when contacted by AFP.
Photo: AFP
On Tuesday, 51-year-old Godreche lodged a formal complaint with the French police’s Juvenile Protection Brigade (BPM) of alleged rape of a minor by a person in a position of authority, her lawyer Laure Heinich said.
On Wednesday, the Paris prosecutor’s office said that a preliminary investigation was opened, with the BPM in charge of the case.
The announcement comes as French cinema is reeling from claims that the world of arts has shrugged off sexism and sexual abuse for decades.
Godreche last month on social media accused Jacquot, now 77, of manipulating her into a relationship as a vulnerable underage actor.
The crime is punishable by 20 years’ imprisonment, though the statute of limitations has “probably” expired in the case, Le Monde said.
The relationship began in the spring of 1986, when Godreche was 14, and ended in the early 1990s.
Godreche said she remained “in his grip” for six years, starring in two films he directed, Les Mendiants (The Beggars) in 1988 and La Desenchantee (The Disenchanted) in 1990. She decided to speak out after discovering him boasting about their relationship being a “transgression”, and cinema providing a “cover” for it, in a 2011 documentary.
Jacquot, a director with more than 50 films and TV films to his name, has said he needs to be “in love” with his actresses to film them.
He has worked with established stars such as Catherine Deneuve and Isabelle Huppert, as well as Godreche, Virginie Ledoyen and Isild Le Besco as teenagers.
In 2015, he described his work as “pushing an actress to pass a threshold.”
“The best way to do all that is to be in the same bed,” he said.
Godreche spoke to Le Monde at length about her relationship with Jacquot, recounting how he first had sex with her.
“He took my hand and led me upstairs, telling me to lie down on his bed,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “I have no memory of being kissed. It’s as if there was no tenderness at all.”
Le Monde said the director talked to the teenager about sadism in cinema and played sadomasochistic sexual games with her.
He also forbade her to use any contraception and grew especially violent toward the end of their relationship, the newspaper said.
“It’s a story similar to stories of children who are kidnapped and grow up without seeing the world, and who can’t think ill of their captor,” the actress wrote in a statement for the BPM quoted by the newspaper. “I wanted Benoit to agree to be my friend, not to have me, I didn’t want his body.”
In a separate letter addressed to her 18-year-old daughter Tess and published by Le Monde, Godreche said she had never consented to the relationship with the director.
She wrote she had thought how she could “kill a man who would make you his mistress at 14.”
Speaking to Le Monde, Jacquot said he was “very much in love” with Godreche and they lived together.
“I was in a very bad way, I didn’t want to make any more films, and she pulled me out of the dark,” he was quoted as saying. “It was me, without irony, who was under her spell for six years.”
Godreche was among those in 2017 to speak out against US movie producer Harvey Weinstein at the height of the #MeToo movement.
Years later the campaign has picked up momentum in France and is forcing a fresh debate about sexism and sexual violence in French cinema.
Newly released footage of film star Gerard Depardieu making obscene comments sparked an uproar in the country in December last year, with French President Emmanuel Macron saying the actor had become the target of a “manhunt.”
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant