The French actress Judith Godrèche denounced on Monday on social networks the support that the director Benoît Jacquot enjoys in the world of cinema, with whom she had a relationship as a teenager and who has never hidden his attraction to very young actresses.
The actress recently mentioned this multi-year relationship with the French filmmaker, who is 25 years her senior, in the TV channel Arte's “Icon of French Cinema” series, but had never asked the director so explicitly before.
Benoît Jacquot did not want to comment when contacted by AFP.
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The denunciation of Judith Godrèche comes amid a rupture in French cinema caused by star actor Gérard Depardieu, who was accused of rape and widely criticized after the broadcast of images in which he repeated misogynistic remarks.
“The little girl in me can no longer remain silent about this name,” she said in a message posted on Instagram last weekend, which was deleted and reposted online on Monday, where she speaks of “control” and “perversion.”
“His name is Benoît Jacquot. He still manipulates those who might associate her name with mine. Bear your testimony. He is threatening to take me to court for defamation,” said the 51-year-old actress, believing that the filmmaker was “appreciated for his perversion.”
“Who has respect for BJ practices? Known to everyone for 35 years? Who supports and validates? The agent representing him? (…) Where does this feeling of impunity come from? Everything was known. And the same people are taking part in the maneuvers,” she continues, fearing that she will be “turned away” after these comments.
A speech motivated by the viewing of a documentary in which Benoît Jacquot takes on the transgressive aspect of his previous relationship with the teenager. “Yes, it was a transgression. In terms of the law alone (…) we fundamentally don't have the right, I believe. A girl like her, who was actually 15 years old and I was 40, had no right,” we can hear her saying in the 2011 documentary.
Judith Godrèche was revealed in Les Mendiants de Jacquot (1988) and then in La Désenchantée (1990). The filmmaker based his work on actresses, including stars like Isabelle Huppert.
“I can only film an actress if I'm in love with her,” the director speculated in the newspaper Le Figaro in 2009.