Judith Godrèche did not set out to relaunch the #MeToo movement in France’s movie industry.
She came back to Paris from Los Angeles in 2022 to work on “Icon of French Cinema,” a TV series she wrote, directed and starred in — a satirical poke at her acting career that also recounts how, at the age of 14, she entered into an abusive relationship with a film director 25 years older than her.
Then, a week after the show aired, in late December, a viewers’ message alerted her to a 2011 documentary that she says made her throw up and start shaking as if she were “naked in the snow.”
There was the same film director, admitting that their relationship had been a “transgression” but arguing that “making films is a kind of cover” for forms of “illicit traffic.”
She went to the police unit specialized in crimes against children — its waiting room was filled with toys and a giant teddy bear, she recalls — to file a report for rape of a minor.
“There I was,” said Ms. Godrèche, now 52, “at the right place, where I’ve been waiting to be since I was 14.”
Since then, Ms. Godrèche has been on a campaign to expose the abuse of children and women that she believes is stitched into the fabric of French cinema. Barely a week has gone by without her appearance on television and radio, in magazines and newspapers, and even before the French Parliament, where she demanded an inquiry into sexual violence in the industry and protective measures for children.
In response, many other women and men have publicly spoken to say that they, too, were victimized in the country’s revered movie industry, where some directors have long been celebrated for transgressing social and moral norms in the name of their art.
While #MeToo quickly toppled several powerful men in Hollywood after the movement started in 2017, its impact in France has been slower. It has caused some small changes in the industry but has also confronted strong resistance.
This time, many actresses and experts say they sense a shift in perception.
“Something very profound and very luminous is in the midst of happening,” said the actress Anouk Grinberg. “People who defend victims are no longer considered enemies and hyenas that hunt after men.”
An association of actresses, A.D.A., was formed in 2021 to lobby for change in the industry, including for having intimacy coordinators — professionals who help actors and film crews navigate sex scenes — on set as standard practice. Members say that they have been overwhelmed by applicants to join the association, as well as by victims offering testimonies.
“The difference now,” said Clémentine Poidatz, an A.D.A member, “is people are listening.”
Signs of shifting attitudes are hard to measure. But Ms. Godrèche, who was a film star in France before moving to the United States a decade ago, has received an emotional reception from powerful audiences, including committee members in both the French Senate and National Assembly.
In one public hearing, Erwan Balanant, a centrist lawmaker, said he was embarrassed that he had loved the films she starred in when they were both teenagers. He no longer saw them the same way, he added.
Ms. Godrèche was also invited to give a speech at the Césars, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, four years after it awarded the best director prize to Roman Polanski, who fled from the United States in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old.
At the ceremony, Ms. Godrèche, addressing France’s cinema stars and power brokers, asked how they could collectively accept “that this art that we love so much, this art that binds us” is used as a cover to abuse girls.
She received a standing ovation.
In an interview, Ms. Godrèche, who was among those in the United States to speak out about the movie producer Harvey Weinstein, said: “I don’t see myself as the messiah. I didn’t invent #MeToo. There were women who talked here before me.” She understood how difficult it is to drive fundamental cultural shifts, she added.
“You need to hit the door, and hit the door, and hit the door,” she said. “You don’t need one piano. You don’t need one guitar. You need a whole fanfare — a brass band.”
That banging had already bought some bouts of reckoning and some structural changes. The French government now offers financial incentives for films to recruit more female talent and requires producers to be trained in preventing sexual violence before receiving certain subsidies.
But there has been fierce resistance, too. The #MeToo movement has often been dismissed as an encroachment of puritanical American mores on an essential part of France’s intellectual and cultural identity.
The particularities of French cinema also make it averse to change. Moviemaking in France is often seen as an art form first and foremost, not a business, and sets are rarely treated like any other workplace.
While most applaud a redistributive funding system that shields independent films from box office pressure, critics say that it also makes some directors immune to introspection and hoists their artistic vision above all else — including, occasionally, the law.
Added to that is the distinctly French admiration of the artist’s role as a rule breaker in a world where “there is no war of the sexes, there are only relations of seduction,” said Geneviève Sellier, an emeritus professor of cinema studies at Bordeaux Montaigne University who runs a feminist criticism website called Gender and the Screen.
That situation “is obviously an extremely convenient mask for male domination,” she added.
Some male actors have also raised their voices. One of them, Aurélien Wiik, started the #MeTooGarçons hashtag, or #MeTooBoys, which has been used by people in other walks of French society to recount their experiences of abuse.
One of the most prominent men to face accusations in France is the movie star Gérard Depardieu. Over a dozen women have said that he sexually harassed or abused them. In 2021, he was charged with raping and sexual assaulting a young aspiring actress, Charlotte Arnould. Mr. Depardieu has categorically denied any wrongdoing, and he has not been convicted. The investigation is continuing.
In December, just before Ms. Godrèche began to speak out, a television investigation showed footage of Mr. Depardieu making crude and sexist comments during a 2018 trip to North Korea.
The videos elicited outrage, but President Emmanuel Macron pushed back, condemning what he called a “manhunt” against the actor.
Ms. Arnould said she believed a change was afoot because more women were speaking out. But, she added, she was not optimistic about the results.
“Men are still not afraid enough. For that to happen, it would require a total reversal of the system and a collective awakening,” she said in an email.
Much of the outrage about the television documentary focused on Mr. Depardieu’s vulgar comments about a prepubescent girl riding a horse. But less fury was kindled by the interviews with four adult women who say they were directly victimized by him.
“For the general public, there’s more empathy for children than when it’s adult women talking about assault,” said Ariane Labed, an A.D.A. founder. For the women, she said, there is still a lingering blame — as in “she should have known better.”
In 2020, France’s literary establishment was shaken by the publication of “Consent,” a book by Vanessa Springora that detailed the torturous relationship she had at age 14 with the celebrated writer Gabriel Matzneff, then 49, under the complacent gaze of the country’s cultural elite. Many of his published works detailed his sexual pursuits with girls and boys in their early teens or younger.
Confronted with that historically lax attitude, France strengthened its prohibition of sexual contact with minors under 15, reclassifying it as rape when the adult is more than five years older.
Ms. Godrèche said she saw her story as cinema’s version of “Consent.”
She started in films as a child, and landed a role at 14 in a film by the director Benoît Jacquot. Their relationship played out in plain view. They bought an apartment together when she was 15 and he 40.
She has also accused Jacques Doillon, another director, of sexually assaulting her twice — once when she was starring in his film “The 15-Year-Old Girl” about a father who falls in love with his son’s girlfriend. Mr. Doillon also played the father, and demanded 45 takes for a sex scene with her, she told French radio.
Through their lawyers, both men denied the allegations and declined to comment further.
Mr. Doillon is suing Ms. Godrèche for defamation over comments she made on Instagram accusing him of having sexual relations with children.
In an interview with the newspaper Le Monde, Mr. Jacquot acknowledged his relationship with Ms. Godrèche — and many other young women whom he considered his muses — but denied having any sexual relations with her before she was 15. He also disputed having been violent or coercive with her.
It was Mr. Jacquot, speaking in that 2011 documentary, that set off Ms. Godrèche’s campaign. Among the specific demands Ms. Godrèche has made is a parliamentary investigation into sexual violence and risks to children in the film industry. She has echoed A.D.A.’s call for intimacy coordinators, particularly when children are involved.
But she considers the current reckoning in France to be much larger.
“French cinema represents French society,” she said. “The directors are fathers and uncles and best friends of the family and grandfathers. And it is within these families that we tell children and women and young men and men to not speak.”
A month after she began to speak out, Ms. Godrèche asked her followers on social media to send her their own stories of abuse. Since then, she said, some 5,000 messages have poured in.
Many, she said, had never disclosed the abuse before. Others raised abuse in their family that was never acknowledged.
She is currently making a short film inspired by their stories, she added. “This is just the beginning.”
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