The French film star Gérard Depardieu was convicted of sexual assault in Paris on Tuesday. But for many, he wasn’t alone on the stand: French cinema and the country’s long-term resistance to the #MeToo movement were also being judged.
They, too, were found guilty.
“This was the trial of impunity, the trial of silence and forced forgetting, the trial of letting things slide,” said Emmanuelle Dancourt, president of #MeTooMedia, an association advocating for victims of sexual violence in the world of French culture.
She added: “It was the trial of a man who was answerable to the law like all others. But of a man who was protected for decades, and who embodies a much bigger system.”
Mr. Depardieu, who is among France’s most famous actors, groped two female colleagues on the set of the 2022 film “Les Volets Verts.” He was handed an 18-month suspended sentence, ordered to pay the two women more than 39,000 euros — about $43,000 — and his name will be added to the national sex and violent offender registry.
While Mr. Depardieu’s lawyer, Jérémie Assous, said his client intended to appeal the ruling, feminists across France celebrated a rare and potent victory. Since the #MeToo movement arrived in France in 2017, there has been an outpouring of testimony of sexual abuse, but relatively few cases have gone to court. The fact that Mr. Depardieu was not only tried but also convicted was a significant milestone, they said. But many also sensed it might reveal a growing crack in the severe resistance the #MeToo movement had faced in the country, and offer an indication of societal change.
The verdict followed one in February, when a French court convicted the director Christophe Ruggia of sexually assaulting the actress Adèle Haenel when she was a minor. He is also appealing.
“Until now, we had the impression that the police and the justice system were incapable of seriously taking these issues into account,” said Geneviève Sellier, a feminist film critic and author of “The Cult of the Auteur.” “It feels like we are turning a page.”
Mr. Assous said the decision made the whole point of a trial moot. “From the moment you are charged today in a so-called sexual assault case, you are automatically condemned” he said.
Included in the damages awarded to the victims by the panel of three judges were 1,000 euros each for the suffering that Mr. Assous had caused them in the four-day trial, during which he called the accusers liars and their female lawyers “stupid” and “hysterical.”
The defense itself was very much in keeping with the history of #MeToo in France, which Laure Murat, an expert on #MeToo in France at the University of California, Los Angeles, describes as a “counter-history.”
“There was a backlash, which preceded the event, before anything happened,” said Ms. Murat.
First, the movement of women telling their stories of victimization online was dismissed by many as a toxic importation of puritanical American mores that were unnecessary in a culture of seduction and harmony between the sexes.
“Persistent or clumsy flirting is not a crime,” the film legend Catherine Deneuve and 99 other women wrote in an open letter in the French national newspaper Le Monde just three months after the French version of #MeToo — #balancetonporc — began. They defended “the freedom to bother” and for women to say no.
Then, there was something known as the French cultural exception — the financial support and cultural adulation of artists that let them get away with anything in the name of genius.
That has meant that while there have been small changes in fighting sexual violence since 2017, particularly regarding children, the judicial system has been largely intransigent.
At the same time, the numbers of women speaking out about sexual violence and going to the police have surged. Between 2017 and 2023, police reports of rape and attempted rape in France rose to 42,600 from 14,800.
There have been #MeToo eruptions in the French news media, the music industry, theater, politics and the sports industry. And building now is a #MeToo in the private Roman Catholic school system.
“If you look at #MeToo in France, it has never stopped,” said Sandrine Rousseau, a feminist lawmaker who publicly accused her powerful party leader of sexual harassment in 2016. “But like a river, it doesn’t go straight — it avoids obstacles, sometimes it takes an unexpected path, and then it comes back. But what strikes me is how it hasn’t stopped.”
Mr. Depardieu is a powerful symbol of both those forces. In recent years, more than 20 women have publicly accused the actor of sexual abuse. Six filed complaints with the police — two of which were dropped because they were past the statute of limitations.
A strong defense, packed with famous actors and politicians, rushed into place each time, celebrating the actor’s “genius” and “masterful” talent, and calling him the victim of a “lynching.” Even President Emmanuel Macron got involved, saying on public television that Mr. Depardieu “makes France proud.”
“Depardieu, he’s a monument of French cinema, and there was a whole system to protect people, but particularly him,” said Anne-Cécile Mailfert, the president of the Women’s Foundation, a nonprofit in central Paris that houses many women’s rights associations and funds feminist community projects across the country.
Ms. Mailfert said the highly publicized trial exposed the public to misogynistic defense tactics that victims commonly face in court and the deficiencies of the criminal system when it comes to addressing sexual violence.
But much bigger changes are needed, she said.
In fact, while the number of sexual violence cases has surged in France, so, too, has the percentage of cases that are thrown out by investigators — climbing to 94 percent in 2020 from 82 percent in 2012, according to a report by the Institute for Public Policy in Paris.
“We are confronted by a wall of justice that we can’t get through because they absolutely do not want to put the resources needed to treat all these complaints,” Ms. Mailfert said. “They say there are too many complaints. But if there are too many complaints, it’s because there’s too much rape.”
Her organization launched a broad campaign demanding that the government make major reforms and commitments to combat sexual violence in education and enhance child protection, victim support and, notably, the judicial system. The annual estimated cost is 2.6 billion euros ($2.9 billion) — money the government, to date, has been unwilling to spend.
“We haven’t had our #MeToo,” Ms. Dancourt said. “We speak out, we talk about the abuse, but it hasn’t been followed by a political will. There is no urgency when it comes to sexist and sexual violence.”
Some systemic changes have started to take place, particularly in the wake of the mass trial in which 51 men were convicted, most for raping Gisèle Pelicot after she had been drugged by her husband at the time.
This spring, the government approved a robust curriculum for mandatory sex education classes for the first time, that focus on the prevention of sexism and sexual violence.
A law introducing the concept of consent into the legal definition of rape in France was passed by the lower house of Parliament in April and is awaiting debate in the Senate.
And Ms. Rousseau, the lawmaker, recently ended a six-month parliamentary investigation into sexist and sexual violence in France’s cultural sectors. It was the first #MeToo in-depth examination of the industry. It found that sexual violence was endemic in the country’s cinema and that, while victims had spoken up for years, the people in power had refused to listen.
Among the committee’s 89 recommendations, many target the larger justice system. The include offering financial aid to victims of sexual violence so they can pay for lawyers.
The report took aim at the “cult of genius creator” status in France that created a “breeding ground of abuse of power and a feeling of impunity.”
“People are realizing that the ‘exception française” has meant we are 10 years late in addressing #MeToo,” said Ms. Murat, the academic, who is French. “There is something that is very slowly changing in French society and that young people are realizing it’s not tolerable anymore.”
Ségolène Le Stradic contributed research.
Catherine Porter is an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is based in Paris.
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