New thunderclap in the world of French cinema. The director Philippe Garrel, a leading figure of the New Wave, is accused of sexual violence by several actresses. In an investigation published on the Mediapart website, the actresses denounce inappropriate actions, some of which may amount to sexual assault. Among those speaking, former students of the director at the Conservatory as well as actresses Anna Mouglalis, Clotilde Hesme, Marie Vialle and Laurence Cordier. According to them, the filmmaker tried to kiss them without their consent or made inappropriate gestures.
The actress Anna Mouglalis, who denounces the actions of the director, has already worked with him on a film released in 2013, La Jalousie. According to Mediapart, he then contacts her again to write a new feature film on female desire. The actress organizes work sessions at her home with the director who is 30 years older than her at the time of the events. According to Anna Mouglalis, Philippe Garrel disappears from her living room after she left to go to the bathroom. She finds the director lying on his bed, on the pretext that he “needed it for his pain”. “It’s so huge even though there were two sofas right next to it in the living room!”, the actress told Mediapart.
Philippe Garrel would have insisted on staying at the actress’s home, before calling a taxi. The director rejects this version of the facts. “We were in the kitchen, and I felt unwell. I told her I needed to lay down, to which she replied, “Oh? You think ?” And I repeated to him that I really didn’t feel well and that I had to lie down. So I went to his bed and lay down for twenty minutes, before going home. “He also assures that he had “no ambivalent gesture” during this professional meeting.
Other testimonies from women refer to forced kisses. This is the case of an actress who wished to remain anonymous. According to Mediapart, she got a small role in one of the director’s feature films in 2017. The following year, Philippe Garrel told her that he was working on a new screenplay and wanted to meet her. During the meeting, Garrel tells her that he has booked a hotel room. The young woman “believes in a joke” and explains that there is “error on the person”. She would have made it clear that she “wants to discuss work but that’s all”.
When they went to the terrace of a café a few minutes later to discuss work, the director allegedly caressed her thighs. “That’s enough in fact,” the young woman would have told him. According to his testimony, he would have retorted: “I try.” Before accompanying her to the metro, where he allegedly tried to kiss her. For his part, Philippe Garrel evokes him, “a kiss on the cheek”.
The actress Laurence Cordier testifies to similar facts. In 2003, when she was in her final year at the Paris Conservatory, the director invited her to dinner to talk to her about a role. After this meeting, he would have offered her a “walk” during which he walks “very close” to her. And to say, “Come on, I’ll pay you for the hotel.” The actress, who specifies that she refused, accuses the director of having then grabbed her by the waist, before she put him at a distance. An episode that she would have already mentioned in the magazine Les Inrocks, described at the time as “an interaction with a major director of French cinema”.
In 1994, the director, according to Mediapart, offered to “write a film for” one of his students at the conservatory, Marie Vialle. The young woman, who studied at this school between the ages of 20 and 23, recalls several professional meetings, including one where the director tried to kiss her. “I can’t make the film if I don’t sleep with you,” he allegedly told her, before admitting to her that he is “in love” with her and that he needs, for his film, her know “for real”. The actress renounces the film.
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For his part, Philippe Garrel evokes sincere feelings. “I remember explaining to him that, like many New Wave directors, I liked to shoot with the woman I was in love with and film her. I may have tried to kiss her, I don’t remember, but she certainly turned me away since it was precisely at that lunch that I understood that she was not at all attracted to me”, he explains to Mediapart. Before apologizing: “If I hurt Marie Vialle, for whom I have a lot of respect, I am sorry.”
Anaïs, another actress who testifies anonymously, explains that the director would have tried to kiss her in 2013. According to her testimony, the young woman does not experience the experience as an assault. “Tetanized, I did not understand. Then, he was very respectful of my refusal. I was surprised but I didn’t experience it badly. I told myself that he was not going to take me on as I had refused and he called me back for the role,” she explains.
The actress Clotilde Hesme, who played in Regular Lovers (2005), for her part, reproaches the filmmaker for “humiliation” during the shooting of this film. According to her, the filmmaker nicknamed her “Incest”, because in the film, she lived a love story with her son, Louis.
The director evokes an awareness when reading the different testimonies. “I realize the difference between what I imagined then and what I made them experience. I had already become aware of the culture that shaped me, and this opened up a questioning in me,” he writes. Shortly after this statement, the director contacted Anna Mouglalis on August 24 to ask her to “withdraw her testimony” in the name of the “friendship” that binds them. “I have never seen Philippe Garrel outside of work, but he calls it friendship. And then, he didn’t call me to find out what motivated my testimony, just to ask me to remove it,” the actress told Mediapart. For Philippe Garrel, it was about discussing “the accusations she had made against him”. For the director’s lawyer, the latter “did not exert any pressure on this actress”.