If it weren’t for the ban on nudity and “voluminous” outfits, the latest controversy to fuel talk of policing women’s dress, one might struggle to recognise Cannes this year.
In an unprecedented move, the Cannes Film Festival banned a French actor from walking the red carpet on Thursday for the gala premiere of Dominik Moll’s competition entry “Case 137”, because the actor faces accusations of rape.
Hours later, the independent ACID sidebar that runs parallel to the festival said it had suspended one of its vice presidents after he was publicly accused of sexual assault during a Cannes roundtable.
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Two days earlier, during the festival’s opening ceremony, host Laurent Laffitte paid tribute to French actress Adèle Haenel, whose decision years ago to walk out on French cinema over its culture of abuse and impunity was met by industry leaders with a collective shrug.
The very same morning, a court in Paris found French film giant Gérard Depardieu guilty of groping two women on a film set and handed him a suspended jail term – in a groundbreaking verdict that Cannes jury president Juliette Binoche said would “of course” never have happened without the #MeToo movement.
All of which points to a significant shift for a festival that had only paid lip service to the #MeToo movement until last year's edition offered the first hints of awareness.
It comes two years after Cannes’ decision to hand Johnny Depp’s comeback movie “Jeanne du Barry” the prestigious curtain raiser slot saw more than a hundred French actors blast the festival for “rolling out the red carpet for aggressors”.
A change of rules
French actors Ariane Labed and Alma Jodorowsky were among the 123 signatories – the vast majority women – of the Libération op-ed denouncing the festival in 2023. Two years on, they say the festival's radical change of stance is a win for all victims of abuse.
“We took issue with Cannes two years ago because they were clearly not up to the job,” says Labed, who has starred in several films by Yorgos Lanthimos. “Now we’re delighted to see the festival take these matters seriously.”
Jodorowsky adds: “To have to see their aggressors be showcased and honoured in all impunity is a double punishment for the victims of abuse. It’s important that major institutions like Cannes ensure they don’t suffer this way.”
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The world’s most prestigious film festival has introduced new rules this year requiring movie producers to guarantee that films submitted respect the “safety, integrity and dignity” of all contributors.
Théo Navarro-Mussy, the actor who was barred from the red carpet premiere of “Case 137”, has been accused of rape by three former partners. The case was dropped last month due to lack of evidence, but French media report that the three women plan to file a civil lawsuit.
“It is because there is an appeal, and therefore the investigation is still active, that the case is not suspended,” Cannes festival director Thierry Frémaux told French magazine Télérama. “When a legal decision becomes final, the situation changes.”
The movie's director, whose previous film “The Night of the 12th“ centred on an unsolved case of femicide, said he supported the ban. “It was the proper decision,” Moll told AP. “Out of respect for the women, the plaintiffs.”
‘Endemic’ abuse
The build-up to cinema’s annual Riviera gathering has been overshadowed by a damning French parliamentary inquiry into the entertainment industry published in early April, which concluded that “moral, sexist, and sexual violence in the cultural sector is systemic, endemic, and persistent”.
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The six-month inquiry heard testimony from around 350 people in the film, TV, theatre and performing arts industries, including some the biggest names in French cinema. Its chair, Green Party lawmaker Sandrine Rousseau, called on Cannes to set an example in stamping out abuse.
“The Cannes Film Festival must be the place where this shift in mindset happens,” Rousseau told reporters. “The place where we say loud and clear (...) amid the glitter and the red carpets (...) that finally, we all want things to change: every one of us, at every level of the industry.”
Labed and Jodorowsky, both members of the ADA association of actors who campaign against sexual and sexist violence on film sets, agree that the festival has a special duty when it comes to cracking down on abuse.
“The film world and Cannes in particular enjoy a great deal of exposure – and this comes with a duty towards society,” says Jodorowsky, who walked the red carpet on Friday for her part in the Nathalie Portman-produced animated film “Arco”. “It’s important to show that domination, abuse and the culture of rape are no longer acceptable.”
Cult of the auteur
The parliamentary inquiry owes much to the campaigning of French actor and director Judith Godrèche, whose accounts of the grooming she says she endured as a teenage actor triggered a belated #MeToo reckoning in France.
Read more‘Wind of revolt’ sweeps French cinema in belated #MeToo reckoning
Last year, Cannes screened a short film by Godrèche titled “Moi Aussi” ("Me Too", in French), a choral piece uniting victims of all ages, some them male, who find strength and solace in speaking out about their personal trauma. The screening marked one of the highlights of a festival that has long been accused of doing too little to foster gender parity in film and where the disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein once held court.
In 2017, at the dawn of the #MeToo era, Godrèche was among the first to speak out against Weinstein, telling the New York Times that the film producer assaulted her in a hotel during the Cannes Film Festival two decades earlier, when she was 24. Since then, the press has been awash with reports of industry insiders, Cannes chauffeurs and hotel staff confirming Weinstein’s predatory behaviour.
For years, however, France’s own Weinsteins evaded scrutiny, shielded by ingrained suspicion of the #MeToo movement as a puritanical witch-hunt imported from America – and by what film expert Geneviève Sellier describes as a “cult of the auteur” that has long been used to excuse or cover up reprehensible behaviour.
“The cult of the auteur places artistic genius – regarded as necessarily male – above the law,” says Sellier, a professor emeritus at Bordeaux-Montaigne University who runs a blog on film and gender. “This French tradition explains in part why the country remains largely blind to the realities of male domination and abuse.”
Cautious optimism
The notion that art should shield artists from scrutiny has taken a hit with the guilty verdict handed this week to Depardieu – who, as late as December 2023, was defended by French President Emmanuel Macron as a “genius of his art” who “makes France proud”, and a victim of a “manhunt”.
Carine Durrieu Diebolt, a lawyer for one of the plaintiffs in the case, described the ruling as “the victory of two women” and “of all women beyond this trial”. She added: “Today we hope to see the end of impunity for an artist in the world of cinema. (...) And today, as the Cannes Film Festival opens, I’d like the film world to spare a thought for Gérard Depardieu’s victims.”
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Depardieu, who is appealing the conviction, was ordered to pay a further €1,000 each to the plaintiffs over the “excessive harshness” displayed in court by his lawyer, who sparked outrage by branding the women “hysterical” and “liars” working for the cause of “rabid feminism”.
The latter decision is an important step forward, says Jodorowsky, noting that the cards are still stacked against the victims in cases of sexual abuse. Last year, more than 22,000 rapes were reported in France, but fewer than 3 percent led to convictions.
Expressing “guarded optimism”, Labed cautions that it is much too early to suggest the #MeToo movement has “won”. She adds: “We won’t be satisfied until we have a comprehensive – and well-funded – policy of tackling violence against women and all forms of discrimination, whether it is based on gender, sexual orientation or race.”
Words into action
Likewise, much remains to be done within the film world to prevent such cases of abuse.
In its final report, the parliamentary inquiry chaired by Rousseau made nearly 90 recommendations, including better safeguarding for children and women during castings and on set. It noted that the entertainment industry was often a “talent shredder” while casting calls were “a place of highest danger”.
The key challenge now is for lawmakers and the industry to translate the report’s findings into concrete action, says Sellier, noting that the “defensive posture” adopted by many industry workers during parliamentary auditions “begs the question of whether they have really grasped the scale of the problem”.
Advocacy groups like ADA have welcomed a recent announcement by the National Centre for Cinema (CNC), which helps finance and promote French film productions, that it will expand training programmes to prevent abuse in the industry, including for festival executives.
At a Cannes roundtable on Thursday, where a woman stood up to say she had been abused by an executive from the ACID independent festival, CNC director Gaëtan Bruel said the #MeToo movement had acted as an “electroshock” forcing the film world to “confront its darker sides”.
Bruel, whose predecessor Dominique Boutonnat was forced to step down last year following a conviction for sexual assault, said the CNC might complement its current policy of financial “incentives” for films that have gender parity on set with a policy of “punishing” those that don’t.
Where are the men?
Jodorowsky says she has recently witnessed progress in safeguarding actors on French film sets, spurred by the emergence of a new generation of filmmakers and actors who have greater awareness of these issues. She points to the growing practice of including intimacy coordinators on film sets to ensure the well-being and consent of actors and better regulate intimate scenes.
“We’ve campaigned hard to ensure their work is recognised and to have a proper training programme for intimacy coordinators in film schools, because there was none in France,” she explains.
Read moreFrench cinema has its #MeToo moment, sparking growing need for intimacy coordinators
“Compared to the English-speaking world, we still have some catching up to do when it comes to making film sets truly safe environments. But we’re making progress,” adds Labed, whose directorial debut “September Says” premiered at the festival last year.
Cannes this year has played up the number of women directors (seven out of 22) in the main competition – a record for a festival where, until recently, female Palme d’Or winners could be counted on one finger.
“They’re keen to show they’re on the right side of the #MeToo debate,” says Sellier. “Yes, there are more women filmmakers than in the past. But what’s really changing is that they're finally enjoying some of the visibility afforded by platforms like Cannes.”
Another urgent challenge, says Labed, is for French cinema to better reflect the diversity of society, “reaching beyond our milieu that remains predominantly white, bourgeois, straight and non-disabled”.
Asked whether she feels that male actors are starting to play their part in combating gender-based violence in the industry, she answers with a straight, “No”.
“Our male colleagues are simply not by our side. And when they’re asked to testify in parliament, they do so behind closed doors,” Labed says. “It proves that, yes, we’re moving forward, but with the hand-brake pulled.”
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