She is the star of one of the best French series. But also a voice like no other, with resolute gravity. And a magnetic presence noted in Claude Chabrol, the feminist filmmaker Chantal Akerman, Audrey Diwan…
She’s Anna Mouglalis, headliner of Baron Noir… Who floored us again, this time off-screen. Indeed, the actress testified as part of the Commission of Inquiry into violence committed in the cinema, audiovisual, live performance, fashion and advertising sectors, at the National Assembly. Which notably gave rise to a moving speech by the elected environmentalist Sandrine Rousseau: a very trying sequence to find here.
Or to this equally moving testimony.
And in the context of these personal revelations so hard to digest, Anna Mouglalis denounces in particular the proposal, at her very beginnings in the world of cinema (in 1997)… from the psychoanalyst Gérard Miller, screenwriter of the film Terminale, one of his first notable roles.
At the end of the 90s, when she was 20 years old, Gérard Miller suggested that the young actress invite her to his home to “fine-tune the script”. “It’s normal to have confidence, when you are sent by the production, to a screenwriter, that you want to act in a film“, first explains the actress. “This should all be very normal…“.
But it was at this moment, in the private mansion where he was staying, Boulevard Voltaire, that Gérard Miller suggested… A hypnosis session.
“Hell”, “Crazy things”, “attacks”: Anna Mouglalis breaks the silence
As a reminder, fifty women denounced in major investigations by ELLE magazine Gérard Miller’s alleged “modus operandi”: hypnosis sessions, precisely, at his home, on women, sometimes very young women, followed by massages, on the body, on the chest, on the buttocks, and sexual assault.
Assaults, or rapes, alleged acts of which the psychoanalyst was guilty, on passive women, support the many complainants to ELLE, and to the magazine Envoyé Spécial, which also carried out the investigation.
A large number of these dozens of women speak in turn of “black holes”, of “forgetting”, following these hypnosis sessions. The main person concerned denies the absence of consent, but not always the sexual nature of what is precisely denounced.
Anna Mouglalis therefore continues her testimony on her meeting with Gérard Miller.
She specifies that this curious proposition, that of the hypnosis session, therefore, she refused outright, disconcerted. There, she suddenly feels that the atmosphere changes, within this room, in the company of the highly publicized shrink, following this refusal.
“He then begins to tense up and become a little aggressive.f…”.
“He said to me: ‘well then what are we going to do and what should we do in this scenario?’. I tell him that we don’t have to do anything at all, seeing how it’s gone, it’s not worth it… And then he replies that he will therefore remove the lines from my character to give them to other actresses. I tell him so much the better“
A conversation that ends up being short. But that’s not all…
“Two young women, between 18 and 20 years old”
“At the time, I didn’t talk to the director or the producer about it, I should have“, laments the actress today. “But like actually, I left, I was like ‘actually, he’s just an asshole“.
However, the actress reveals one thing, and not the least: “During the filming, two young women spoke openly to us. They experienced the hypnosis session and the attacks“.
The age of these women? Between 18 and 20 years old, judges the actress.
Anna Mouglalis does not stop there in her testimony.
She also wants to castigate the sexism of an entire system, that of French cinema, in cohesion with the #MeToo movement. This is what she describes as follows: “It’s hell!“. Even adding through her testimony that she has many “crazy things” to be revealed to the public.
As when for the promotion of the film Merci pour le chocolat (2000) by Claude Chabrol, the production asked him “to participate in the chocolate fair, dressed in a chocolate dress, so that visitors can help themselves directly to her, even to the point of stripping her completely naked“, as reported in ELLE magazine.
The state of mind of an era that we hope is over.
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