No more question of not saying his name. The actress Judith Godrèche denounced this weekend on social networks the support enjoyed in the world of the 7th art by the director Benoît Jacquot, with whom she had a relationship when she was a teenager, and who never hid his attraction to very young actresses.
“The little girl in me can no longer keep silent about this name,” she wrote in a story posted on Instagram, deleted before being put back online on Monday, where she speaks of “control”. “His name is Benoît Jacquot. He still manipulates those who might associate their names with mine. Bear witness. He threatens to take me to court for defamation,” says the 51-year-old actress, considering that the filmmaker is “esteemed for his perversion.”
The latter very recently spoke about her relationship of several years with the filmmaker twenty-five years her senior, in the series Icon of French Cinema on Arte, but she had never before so explicitly questioned the director. Asked by Agence France-Presse, Benoît Jacquot did not wish to react.
“Everything was known” in the industry, denounces the actress
“Who has respect for BJ practices? Known to everyone for 35 years? Who endorses and validates? The agent representing him? That he introduced me to when I was 14? His producer? Same thing. (…) Where does this feeling of impunity come from? Everything was known. And the same people are on the maneuvers,” she continues, saying she fears that people will “turn their backs” on her after these comments.
Her speaking out was motivated by watching the documentary L'Interdit, by Gérard Miller, which dates from 2011, where Benoît Jacquot declares that he accepts his past relationship with the teenager, she said. In an extract from the documentary, shared numerous times on social networks, the director states in particular: “Yes, it’s definitely a transgression. If only with regard to the law (…) we do not have the right, in principle, I believe. A girl, like her, this Judith who was in fact 15 years old, and I was 40, in principle I didn't have the right, I don't think. But gosh, I didn't give a damn and even it excited her a lot, I would say. »
“The fact is that, in a certain way, cinema was a kind of cover, in the sense that we have a cover for this or that illicit traffic (…) for morals of this type, I would surely say,” declares Benoît Jacquot again in front of the camera, before adding: “And at the same time in the cinematographic landerneau, we can feel that there is a certain esteem, or a certain admiration, for what others would undoubtedly like to practice Also ".
Judith Godrèche was revealed in Les Mendiants de Jacquot (1988) then La Désenchantée (1990). The filmmaker has built his work around actresses, stars like Isabelle Huppert or debutantes like Isild Le Besco, sister of Maïwenn, revealed at 18 in Sade (2000), the first of their six films together.
“I can only film an actress if I am in love with her,” the person declared in 2009 in the newspaper Le Figaro. “The actresses in my films are like the women of my life […] the flesh of my life,” he added three years later in Télérama.
