In an interview with “Libération”, Juliette Binoche talks about the violence she suffered at the start of her career.
A time when she did not read “a script without a bare scene” and when it was necessary to obey the demands of the filmmakers without flinching.
“Injuries” which “cause rage, revolt” and which have taught him to set limits over the years.
She is one of the greatest actresses of her generation. In a long testimony published Saturday April 27 by Release, Juliette Binoche, 60, recounts for the first time the pressure and sexual assault of which she says she was a victim at the start of her career. A speech which comes as French cinema finally seems to be doing its MeToo following Judith Godrèche’s accusations against Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon.
The daughter of actors, she says she had coffee with a famous agent when she was still in high school. “He offered to come to his office to bring him a nude photo of me, a detail that had embarrassed me, in the event of it being taken in Deadly Hike, by Claude Miller.“ She will not be engaged, but the tone is set.
His first director kisses him by surprise
In 1983, Juliette Binoche filmed her first film for two days. The director invites him “to have dinner at the hotel in the heights of a tower to talk to me about another project. While he points out the view of the Seine, he throws himself on me to kiss me […] I had some signs of distrust after having been touched by a school teacher at 7 years old […] The shock was to realize that this director was also using a ploy and my good faith to achieve his ends..“
The following year, the young actress continued with Family life by Jacques Doillon, a director against whom Judith Godrèche recently filed a complaint. “On location, right away, I had to take off my t-shirt dress in the first scene screaming […] In retrospect, certain lines addressed to me by Sami Frey, who plays my father-in-law, send shivers down my spine. : “Your mother wants me to love you. She dreams of us making love together. So I will love you.” Not sure I understood these lines at the time.“
Cold, nudity, humility. And sometimes humiliation. I accepted everything with enthusiasm
Juliette Binoche in “Libération”
From this period precisely, Juliette Binoche remembers that there was “not a scenario without a nude scene. It was hard. I learned to jump in, like you dive into a cold sea, head first. I saw the date of the nude scenes arrive with fear on the work surface: only a week left, only two days left. Anxiety rose like courage“.
A blind trust that has no consequences. On a platter,” a hand, while we were turning, suddenly came to touch my penis. No one had warned me, let alone asked for my consent. I was stunned. But I wasn’t able to say it […] It took me a long time to understand that I could demand, when the scenes required it, a closed set. Or question a nude scene in a script that I didn’t find necessary.”
Surrealist essays with Godard
Sometimes slip-ups happen off set. During the filming of his first major international film, the director “came into my trailer to grope me“, she remembers. “I pushed him away, he didn’t insist. Lena Olin, who played the other female role, told me that she had the same attempts.”
During this interview, Juliette Binoche recounts tests with a director who asked her to “running naked around a table reading a poem while combing my hair while he films“. Or the day when an actress friend invited him to a shoot and discovered her with “his play partner, his head between his legs. She was naked without any protection […] I left quickly, defeated.”
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Winner of the César, the Oscars, Cannes and even Venice, the actress emphasizes that “all these wounds provoke rage, a revolt. But no desire to stop. The low blows, the inappropriate gestures, the sexist remarks: I don’t forget them, they poison life, but they remain secondary. Basically everything is transformed, everything has sculpted me. The desire to give myself through play remains stronger.”
Which does not prevent him from welcoming the speaking out of his colleagues, in the wake of the MeToo movement, born in the United States following the Weinstein affair, in 2017.I am relieved to see and hear the testimonies of men and women who dare to expose the abuse they suffered“, she insists. “It’s not easy to expose your private life and we should all thank them.“
