Another filming unearthed in light of the #MeToo movement. Actress Caroline Ducey speaks out about the rape she says she suffered at age 21 during the filming of the movie “Romance” in 1999. In her book “La Prédation (Nom féminin)” (Albin Michel), Caroline Ducey already claimed to have been raped in full view of the director. An investigation by “L’Obs” sheds light on the accusations made by the actress against Catherine Breillat, who refutes the words “betrayal” and “predation.”
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The problematic sequence of “the stranger on the stairs”
The two women have opposing views of the shoot: while the filmmaker recalls “a radiant shoot, with moments of harshness”, Caroline Ducey denounces “a pure nightmare”. In the cast of the film, which evokes the sexuality of a young woman in a very crude way, is a certain Rocco Siffredi considered the “king of porn”. But, against all expectations, the intimate scenes with her main partner are not in question. She claims to have been raped during a cunnilingus sequence with a stranger in a stairwell, an experience that she says she has carried as a burden for twenty-five years.
“Catherine asks me to take off my tights and panties. […] I’m going to the slaughterhouse, to end it all.”
The rape occurs in the sequence “The Stranger on the Stairs”. Reza, her partner, is a complete stranger that the director found in a swingers club. “Catherine asks me to take off my tights and panties, for reasons of “realism”, she tells our colleagues. I do so. I go to the slaughterhouse, to end it all. I seek emotion by thinking of my deceased grandfather. I am in a bubble of total concentration. We start the engine. I feel an intense burning: Reza has performed cunnilingus on me.” The actress then describes a loss of consciousness: “I plunge into a black hole, I freeze, by survival instinct.”
Denial and anger of the director
Faced with the rape accusations, Catherine Breillat protests: “I affirm that Caroline was not raped on the set.” She also rejects the allegations that she masturbated an actor on the set, calling this accusation “crazy” and specifying her intention to file a complaint for defamation. She also highlights the atmosphere of the shoot which did not correspond to that described by her actress. “After the day of shooting, the team toasted with white wine, at the hotel bar. Caroline was with us. Not at all the atmosphere that there could be after a rape.”
Known for her sultry approach to the seventh art, Catherine Breillat’s ambition with this film was to “show that there is a beyond the representation of sex, which we never see in pornographic films and where beauty would be found”. The unsimulated sex scenes were part of the project according to the director. “Caroline had accepted them, but it was not stipulated in her contract, so she was free not to shoot them”, she explains.
The powerful testimony of François Berléand
A famous actor who is in the cast testified in favor of Caroline Ducey. François Berléand, who plays a sadomasochistic master in the film, testifies to the difficult conditions of the shoot. When he discovers that his character must perform explicit gestures, including digital penetration, he expresses his refusal to Catherine Breillat. Before the shoot, a written agreement is even signed between the two.
“When we got to the scene where I had to put my hand on Caroline’s genitals, I took out my letter and started reading it. Breillat wanted me to ‘dip my fingers in egg white’, as she elegantly put it…”, he recounts in particular. Together, the two actors set up a scheme to make Breillat believe that there was an undisguised sexual act, but this is not the case.
“I reject the words ‘betrayal’, ‘predation'”
The relationship between Catherine Breillat and Caroline Ducey then deteriorated during the promotion of the film, when the director deliberately excluded the actress from a press conference. The reason for this decision? Caroline Ducey allegedly claimed “to have rewritten certain scenes”, according to the director.
Despite their differences, Catherine Breillat claims not to question the actress’s pain, but vigorously criticizes what she perceives as a contemporary drift. “I refute the words “betrayal”, “predation”, and all this populist rubbish that is very much in the unbreathable air of these retrograde times, where we are trying to force auteur cinema to bend under the yoke of a puritanical totalitarianism.”
