More than fifty French figures defend Depardieu after allegations of sexual misconduct

More than 50 actors, artists and other celebrities in France have issued a letter fervently defending Gérard Depardieu, the actor accused of sexual harassment and assault, calling him the victim of a “lynching” and claiming that despite a storm must be able to continue working. of criticism.

“We can no longer remain silent in the face of the lynching that has descended on him, in the face of the deluge of hatred showered on his person, without any nuance,” they stated in the letter. published Monday by the newspaper Le Figaro. The letter was signed by 56 people, some of them were prominent cultural figures, and others were lesser known personalities.

Among them were the actresses Nathalie Baye, Charlotte Rampling and Carole Bouquet – one of Mr Depardieu’s former partners – as well as the actors Jacques Weber and Pierre Richard; Roberto Alagna, the operatic tenor; Carla Bruni, the singer and former first lady of France; and Bertrand Blier, the director whose 1974 film “Going Places” made Mr. Depardieu famous.

The letter came less than a week after President Emmanuel Macron of France launched his own fervent defense of Mr Depardieu and condemned a “manhunt” against him, sparking rapid shock and bewilderment among French feminists.

While allegations against Mr Depardieu have been mounting for years, much of the criticism against the actor was recently exposed by a French television documentary broadcast this month. on France 2 television. The documentary showed Mr Depardieu making extremely crude sexual and sexist comments during a trip to North Korea in 2018.

In media interviews this year, more than a dozen women have accused him of groping, harassing or sexually assaulting them and making inappropriate sexual comments. He has been accused of rape and sexual assault in one case it involved Charlotte Arnould, a French actress.

Mr Depardieu, 74, has categorically denied any wrongdoing, and he has not been convicted on any of the charges.

In a rare public comment, Mr Depardieu said told RTL radio Tuesday that he had not initiated the letter published in Le Figaro and had not asked for any expression of public support. But he said he had seen the letter before publication and agreed with it.

“I think those who signed it were very brave,” said Mr. Depardieu, once France’s most prominent leading man.

Without mentioning the recent documentary or the women who have accused Mr Depardieu, the letter praises him as “probably the greatest actor” and as a “genius” who made France shine worldwide.

“If you attack Gérard Depardieu in this way, it is art that you are attacking,” said the letter, which, like Macron last week, argued that Mr Depardieu was presumed innocent.

But the letter went far beyond an expression of sympathy for the embattled actor or a reminder that the French courts had not ruled against him. Instead, an impassioned plea was made for him to continue acting and filming.

“It would be a tragedy, a defeat if we were to miss this great actor,” the letter emphasizes. “The death of art.”

The letter was yet another sign of the complicated response to the #MeToo movement in France.

In 2018, a letter signed by more than a hundred French women, including actress Catherine Deneuve, argued that supporters of the #MeToo movement had gone too far by publicly persecuting private experiences and creating a so-called totalitarian climate that was harmful for artistic creation.

The #MeToo reckoning with sexism has been praised by French feminist groups. But it continues to fuel concerns that the country is importing from America what some say are puritanical sexual mores and “cancel culture” – a view challenged by younger generations of French actors.

Emmanuelle Dancourt, President of #MeTooMediaa group that advocates against sexism and sexual violence in the media, said on Tuesday that this generational divide was evident in the letter in Le Figaro, which was signed almost exclusively by people over 50.

It’s “the old movie world,” Mrs. Dancourt told the news channel BFMTVadding that she was “shocked because I feel like there has been a misunderstanding.”

“On the one hand, I understand what they are trying to do, they love Gérard Depardieu, they admire the actor – but so do I,” she said. “There are many films with Gérard Depardieu that I like very much, we are not saying that we should cancel his films and everything he has done.”

But “acts denounced by the victims” must also be taken into account, she said.

The France 2 documentary aired this month includes interviews with four women who accuse Mr Depardieu of inappropriate comments or sexual misconduct, including Ms Arnould and Hélène Darras, an actress who says he sexually assaulted her on a 2008 film set and who has submitted an official report. lawsuit against him in September.

But the documentary also sparked a new storm of criticism against the actor over never-before-seen footage of Mr Depardieu during a trip to North Korea in 2018, where he was invited to the country’s 70th anniversary. In it, Mr Depardieu repeatedly blurts out crude comments about women, sometimes to their faces, using graphic language to describe their physical appearance and referring to their genitals and his own.

“Go ahead, take the photo while I’m touching his butt,” Mr. Depardieu says in a scene in which a guide takes a photo of him with several people, including a woman sitting next to him.

In the documentary, Mr Depardieu uses explicit sexual language about a girl, who according to the documentary is about ten years old, riding a horse. Mr Depardieu’s family does accused the documentary about the misleading editing of that particular scene, but France Télévisions said last week that there was “no doubt and no ambiguity” about the footage and that it was authentic through an expert review of the raw footage.