After revealing to Le Monde, at the beginning of February, that she had suffered “psychological or physical violence” from Benoît Jacquot, French actress Isild Le Besco spoke in an interview with Le Parisien, Thursday February 22, on “the “destructive influence” that she claims to have suffered from the director and on this liberation of speech which “is historic [and] necessary”.
She met Mr. Jacquot in 1999 during the filming of the film Sade, her first major role. The actress, then aged 16, and the 52-year-old director then began a relationship which lasted several years, until the film The Intouchable (2006). “On the surface, it was a relationship nourishing beautiful films and, for me, the discovery of a world. But inside, it was also a destructive influence, a loss of self. Psychological violence, above all,” assures Isild Le Besco in Le Parisien.
“Benoît Jacquot thought he knew better than me who I was and what I thought. (…) For example, he was constantly telling me that I was fat. There was also physical violence, sometimes out of anger,” she continues. The director of five feature films – Demi-Tarif, Charly, Bas-Fonds, La Belle Occasion and Une famille – affirms that this relationship “was constitutive of [her] personality”. “A right of way begets other rights of way. Afterwards, I experienced even worse things with other men because I was ready to crush myself for someone,” she explains.
“Probable” complaint
Isild Le Besco also discusses his meeting with another French director implicated in recent weeks, Jacques Doillon. While she was preparing a role for Carrément à l'Ouest, released in 2001, the actress claims to have been "fired from the film" because she had "refused [the] advances" of the director. “He literally plundered me, and not just my work,” she accuses.
Mr. Jacquot, 77, and Mr. Doillon, 79, are accused by several actresses of sexual violence and harassment. After complaints filed by Judith Godrèche, an investigation was opened against the two directors for “rape of a minor under 15 years old by a person in authority, rape, violence by a partner, and sexual assault on a minor over 15 years old by a person in authority ". Asked about possible filings of complaints against Messrs. Jacquot and Doillon, Isild Le Besco announces to Le Parisien that “it is probable that at some point [she] will do it”.
In this interview, Ms. Le Besco also denounces the responsibility of the “cinema community” which “behaved exactly as a family behaves when one of its members is mistreated: by remaining silent.” “But we must not try to repair a bygone era, we must attack the one we are living through,” she believes.
