Judith Godrèche On Sexual Assault, Harvey Weinstein & Taking On France

EXCLUSIVE: Judith Godrèche is burning down the house. Her hope is that something better will emerge from the ashes.

In recent weeks, the French actress and director, a three-time César nominee known for starring in English and French-language hits including The Man In The Iron Mask, The Spanish Apartment and Potiche, has taken a match to a culture of silence and denial within France’s cinema world when it comes to sexual abuse. In her first trade interview, she talks to Deadline about her experiences, the motivation behind her campaign and what she hopes to achieve.

At the heart of Godrèche’s mission is the relationship she had with director Benoît Jacquot in the late 1980s, which began when she was only 14 years old, and he was 39. The minimum age of consent in France is 15.

Godrèche, now 51, lived with Jacquot for six years and appeared in his films The Beggars and The Disenchanted, before leaving him in her early 20s. 37 years later, the actress is speaking up about this underage relationship, saying she was under the filmmaker’s influence, and challenging what she views as the French film world’s blind acceptance of rape and sexual assault under the guise that it was part of an artistic process. 

In early February, Godrèche filed an official police complaints against Jacquot for “rape with constraint” and against another well known French director, Jacques Doillon, for “rape with violence”, related to his behavior on and off the set of his 1989 film The 15 Year Old Girl. Godrèche’s says Doillon raped her at his home and then assaulted her repeatedly on set in multiple sexually explicit scenes in the film.

Both men have denied the accusations. We have reached out to both for comment. Doillon’s lawyer announced on February 22 that the director was suing Godrèche for defamation following comments she made about him on social media, but not her official police complaint.

Judith Godreche in the The Disenchanted 1990. ©First Run Features/Everett Collection

Godrèche’s campaign isn’t only targeted at individuals. She also has institutions in her sights. 

The actress and director recently took aim at the country’s National Cinema Centre (CNC), asking why its President Dominique Boutonnat is still actively in his role while facing trial on charges related to 2021 sexual assault accusations by his godson, which he has denied. The CNC declined to comment.

She says it is impossible for the CNC to credibly put in place training against sexual and gender-based violence with Boutonnat in situ and the case ongoing. 

Godrèche’s battle comes just two months after the launch in France of her Arte-produced and A24-backed autobiographical movie Icon of French Cinema. The U.S. release has yet to be dated.

Over the course of six episodes, the show dramatizes Godrèche’s real-life return to Paris after a decade in L.A., where she is forced to confront the demons of her teenage sexual abuse as she tries to reintegrate and work in the French cinema world.

The tone is light and there are funny moments, but the underlying message is that what happened to Godrèche as a 14-year-old was wrong, painful and scarring.

Alma Struve stars as teenage Godrèche in flashback screens, while Godrèche plays her dramatized older self. Her real-life daughter Tess Barthémély also co-stars as her character’s daughter, who falls for her much-older dance teacher.

Godrèche’s decision to speak up has ignited a smouldering #MeToo moment in France which has also seen acting icon Gérard Depardieu’s star fall in recent months in the wake of multiple accusations of sexual assault and one of rape, which he has denied. His fall from grace has divided the French cinema world and wider society with President Macron even weighing in in his defence.

Godrèche’s voice is now cutting through in an unprecedented manner.

In a watershed moment, she addressed the audience at France’s César awards last Friday, calling for a new era of truth and an end what she describes as a culture of omertà. This week she was at France’s upper house of parliament, calling for a public inquiry into the culture of sexual violence in the French film world. It marked the first time an artist had spoken to the senate about sexual and gender-based violence in the business.

Below is our interview with Godréche.

DEADLINE: Do you feel like this is a watershed moment for #MeToo in France?

JUDITH GODRÈCHE: I hope there’s a change, but women are being still considered as objects. The reason I keep talking is because I don’t want this to be like a soufflé that rises and then collapses.   

I won’t let go. I’m still accepting interviews because I’m waiting to see change and for people to take action. 

I want to bring hope to everyone who’s been silenced: from young actresses and actors to other film professionals and people in wider French society. If this is the example that cinema sets, how can people outside the film world find the strength to speak up? I feel like I’m putting my foot in the door, so other people can put their foot in the door too.

DEADLINE: Some film professionals have questioned the French industry’s well-worn ‘live and let live’ attitude towards sexually compromising behavior, especially following the global #MeToo movement in 2017. Why do you think France and the French cinema world resisted the issue for so long?

GODRÈCHE: I have thought about it a lot too. I think there is this romanticized vision in France around how the artist needs to consume the muse. He needs to “passer a l’acte”(‘to get down to things’). I’ve asked myself whether it comes from realism, a sort of cinema that captures life, so the director has to grab the beating heart of the young person they’re filming.

I feel like it’s a post-New Wave thing.  Both the directors who I worked with, who abused me, were post-New Wave.

They were saying that their inspiration was the women they met. They took me as an object and moulded me into a version that fed their own cinema, but also their own fantasies and personal narrative.

They both said, “I want to make a movie about you and in order to do this, this is what I need.” 

Jacques Doillon said he needed me to go to his house every day to talk as part of his process. When you’re so young, and even when you’re older, how do you know to say no? How do you know to navigate this predatory behavior when you’re also someone who dreamed from a young age of becoming an actress?

They were both the age of my dad. There was this sense of them being a father figure and of the authority that comes with that.

DEADLINE: Aside from filing an official complaint against Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon, you have also accused French institutions like the National Cinema Centre (CNC) of being part of the culture of omertà around sexual abuse…

GODRÈCHE: I just discovered recently – and I don’t know how I missed it – but the guy who heads the CNC is facing sexual assault charges, and no-one bats an eyelid. It’s insane what’s going on in France. [CNC President Dominique Boutonnat was indicted in 2021 on charges of sexual assault against his 21-year-old godson. He has denied the accusations.]

I was at a meeting with young actresses in which they were talking about their recent experiences on set, and I was like, “What about the CNC? Can’t you go to them?” They were like, “The CNC? No!”.

I was given a copy of a letter signed by all the major producer bodies that was sent to President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 when the accusations against the CNC president first came out. Without questioning the principle of presumption of innocence, they called for him to be suspended until the case was resolved. They were ignored. 

I was already looking at the CNC and how they financed all these movies by Benoît Jacquot, asking, has no-one at the CNC ever looked at his filmography and how his films deal with women? I’m not talking about one film, but a body of work. There’s rape, incest… Even if they weren’t aware of Benoît Jacquot’s relationship with me, they could have read the scripts and asked: ‘Are we really going to finance another film in which there’s some sort of abuse of women?’

DEADLINE: Has it become harder for Benoît Jacquot to secure public funding for his work in recent years?

GODRÈCHE:  His last film [the crime thriller Belle, which revolves around the murder of a young woman] secured Région Ile-de-France funding. It’s extremely hard to get that. Around 200 films apply each year and only 40 films get it. He also got a distributor [KMBO, who we have reached out to for comment] to put down an MG. When you go on their website, they’re also distributing children’s films.  

DEADLINE: From the outside, your life may have looked very glamorous and exciting to other teenage girls at the time, but you have spoken about the pain you felt as a result of these relationships…

GODRÈCHE: I didn’t have this vision of glamor. I wasn’t attracted to those men. I was Little Red Riding Hood and BenoÎt Jacquot was the wolf disguised as the grandmother. You arrive, you don’t really understand or see it happen, then it happens and then you’re in it. I had no-one to talk to about it. It came with a lot of loneliness. I was the perfect target. My parents were not together anymore. I was a very, very lonely kid. He came along and told me I was a miracle. There was this sense of authority about him. That he was going to protect me, give me a part in a movie, a home. It’s hard to navigate that.

DEADLINE: Prior to publicly accusing Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon, you were also among the first actresses to give testimony about Harvey Weinstein to The New York Times as part of their ground-breaking #MeToo investigations. Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie were also among actresses featured at the time. [Godrèche said Weinstein pressed himself against her and tried to remove her clothing in a meeting in Cannes the year of the premiere of the Miramax acquisition Ridicule in which she starred] Were you asked to testify in the trials against Weinstein?

GODRÈCHE: I was asked to maybe be a witness in the Weinstein trial. I met with Joan Illuzzi, who prosecuted Harvey Weinstein in New York. She interrogated me and then said that maybe she would ask me to come on the stand. My reaction was like, “Oh, my God, but do you know my childhood?”

At the time, I felt that I wasn’t going to be a good witness because of my childhood. I felt very guilty for my childhood. I felt that I was somehow responsible and for that I couldn’t be a witness.

Icon of French Cinema, Arte

DEADLINE: Did you ever think that your new show Icon of French Cinema would lead you to take such a public stand and then to make an official complaint about two well known filmmakers?

GODRÈCHE: Never in a million years. It’s been a puzzle and a long, long journey. The show grew out of a desire to tell a story about a French woman returning to France and trying to rebuild her life as she confronts her past. When my daughter became a teenager, the realisation of what had happened to me grew and I decided I needed to tell the story of my childhood in French cinema. 

It was never my intention to say their names. The show doesn’t say their names. Even when I started promoting the show at the Deauville American Film Festival, I didn’t say their names. That was my goal. It was only much, much later with everything that happened that I said their names.

DEADLINE: The announcement of the show last November did not reveal that it was directly inspired by your experiences with Jacquot and Doillon, and very few reports in the French press mentioned it prior to its launch in December. Why was that?

GODRÈCHE: A few people did mention Benoît Jacquot. Our relationship is out there, it’s even on Wikipedia. Once the show was out there, it was obvious, but I think only a few people twigged the Jacques Doillon character.

Before the show launched, I was trying to persuade every journalist not to mention any names. I was having bad dreams, nightmares that Jacquot would call the board of Arte to try to stop the show from airing.

DEADLINE: In your accusations against Doillon, you told French radio that he sexually assaulted you at the home he shared with his then partner, the late Jane Birkin. You also explained that Birkin was on set when Doillon filmed a graphic, unscripted lovemaking scene, which you are now saying was a sexual assault. You suggest that Birkin was upset by what happened but that she didn’t intervene. How did that make you feel?

GODRÈCHE: It’s complicated. Many women are stuck for many different reasons. She was in relationship with him. She was very unhappy on set seeing what happened. I’m sure it was a process for her too. I can’t speak for her. I only have empathy for her and compassion more than anything else, honestly. I’m sure she was also under his control. I don’t want to talk about it, it’s not my place to, and she has just died, but yes, she looked like an extremely unhappy person at that stage.

DEADLINE: You’ve said seeing an extract from the 2011 documentary Les Ruses du Désir: L’interdit by Gérard Miller – in which Jacquot casually describes his relationship with you as a “transgression” due to your young age – as being the final straw that pushed you take action…

GODRÈCHE: In the documentary I’m completely objectified as a 17 year-old. In reality, I was even younger than that that, which would have been even more shocking to watch. But seeing myself as a child on camera, with this man talking about me almost as if I were dead, as if I’m not a human being, it was like being raped again. There’s a feeling of not belonging to yourself, like not having your own voice, not being able to defend yourself or say, this is not how I felt.

DEADLINE: Was anyone on the cinema side at Arte involved in the Icon of French Cinema?

GODRECHE: No, the head of fiction Olivier Wotling commissioned the show. Bruno Patino, the head of Arte France, made a huge decision by greenlighting it given that Arte had previously financed Benoît Jacquot’s films.  

DEADLINE: Were A24 fully aware of the potential implications of this show?

GODRÈCHE:  A24 was very supportive. They are extremely cultivated and love French cinema. They worked with Olivier Assayas, who’s a friend of mine, and was a good presence in my younger life. He was one of the good ones. A24 knew exactly what it was about and where it was going.

I don’t think I could have written this show if it wasn’t for #MeToo. Also, not writing in my mother tongue and without knowing whether it would ever get made, played its part. Moving to America also helped, the fact I was away from my country and was anonymous again. In L.A., no one knows me, even if I was doing some indie movies and writing. 

I was able to reinvent myself and with the distance find my own voice and allow myself to be a creator. Before that, I was constantly worrying about whether the fathers of cinema, the patriarchy, would allow me to be myself. It’s been a very long journey.

DEADLINE: Alma Struve, the actress who plays you as a teenager in Icon of French Cinema, was also 14 years old at the time of the shoot. Given your experiences, how did you do things differently?

GODRÈCHE: It was really important for me that my young actress had a reference like a third person. I brought on a qualified psychologist and intimacy coach. That’s what I wanted.

It would have been easier if I had taken a 16-year-old actress, but I really wanted Alma for the role. I wrote a letter to Social Services, who oversee child actor welfare, explaining my motivations and all the protections we were putting in place, which would almost be a reparation for what I went through. 

Even though I was a female director, I knew that it would be hard for her to express her limits, to say, ‘I don’t feel comfortable doing that’ because you have a whole crew of adults looking at you; looking at what time it is; looking at how much time we have left… We’re like this team, and you’re alone and it’s very hard to navigate that. You have to have one person that’s there for you.

I welcome parents on set, but this third party has to be a different person from a parent because the parents may also feel overwhelmed. It can’t be another crew member either. It has to be someone from outside, someone qualified and independent. A professional who knows they have the law on their side, and the power to go to social services and say, “What’s happening on set is not ok’ if that eventuality arises.

DEADLINE: Were there any scenes you had to do differently because of Alma’s requests?

GODRÈCHE: There’s a scene where she’s being yelled at by an actor. When we rehearsed that scene, every time the actor was shouting at her, she was laughing nervously and feeling extremely uncomfortable. It wasn’t sexual, it was a male actor shouting at her. She needed to work on that and feel more comfortable about it. So we worked with a coach prior to the filming and then that person was also on set when we shot it.

There was this ability to talk about it so she could feel protected when she found herself in front of a male adult actor who represents things that were ultimately sort of scary for her. We worked with the coach to establish what she didn’t feel comfortable with and I then adapted some scenes and my way of shooting. 

There are some scenes where I never planned to use Alma such as the scene where her character is in the bathtub and being washing by the director because she’s vomited at the Locarno Film Festival. That’s not Alma’s body. It’s a body double, which was always the plan.

DEADLINE: You have launched an Instagram campaign aimed at victims of sexual abuses in wider French society. Can you talk about that in more depth?

GODRÈCHE: I put out a call for witnesses on Instagram with an email address, so that anyone who’s victim of abuse can email me. I’m up to 4,000 replies by email and hundreds more on Instagram and direct messages. 

DEADLINE: Are you going to respond to each and every one of them individually?

GODRÈCHE: Yes… I have received so many messages from women saying that they allowed older men into their lives because of the image I was giving them at the time. I feel a sense of responsibility for that.

DEADLINE: Weinstein is now serving a lengthy jail serving, having been found guilty of rape and sexual assault. What do you want to see happen to Jacquot and Doillon if they are found guilty of your accusations?

GODRÈCHE: I want justice to happen, for sure…