She assumes everything and counterattacks. Questioned by accusations of harassment relating to the shooting of her film The Return, the director Catherine Corsini castigates the media trial that was made to her – a gear specific to “a form of patriarchy” she denounces. Interviewed by Le Monde in the company of her producer Elisabeth Perez, the director crushed on Wednesday the excitement aroused by the affair, “a kind of jubilation, a training of each other which prevents thinking”.
The filmmaker has been accused since April of having created a climate of terror during the production of Le Retour, the filming of which was allegedly punctuated with humiliation and violence, both verbal and physical. Two reports for acts of sexual harassment also earned the Return to be withdrawn from the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival for a time, then to re-enter the competition a few days later.
Reacting to this episode, Catherine Corsini crushed the “incredible paternalism” and the “kind of cowardice” of the critics and “rumors” that have overwhelmed her in recent weeks. The director also presented the young actress Esther Gohourou, at the center of the reports, as another victim of the media coverage of the case. “While Esther had asked for confidentiality, the people on the set began to fantasize”, regretted the filmmaker who affirms that the actress had confided to her that she was “fed up that we speak in (her) place”.
Asked about her difficult temper by Le Monde, Catherine Corsini does not deny being “intense and undoubtedly eruptive at times”. She awkwardly specifies that she was less angry with her actors than with her technical team, who were very busy shooting the film in the natural light of Corsica – an artistic choice that involves additional constraints on the set. “Obviously we are not saints, we are human,” summarizes the filmmaker, surprised that the filming problems were not simply resolved within the team.
Finally, Catherine Corsini believes that she is the victim of a stigma that more generally affects women artists. “In the things that have been reproached to me, I cannot help but think that there is a background of misogyny , she believes. Reproaches about the work I was able to do were sometimes taken by men with misplaced pride, because they came from a woman”.
Catherine Corsini was notably supported in April by Denis Podalydès, who had participated in the filming of Le Retour and said to himself, “revolted by the incredible malevolence” aimed at the filmmaker. The subject of scandal in recent months, The Return will be screened on Wednesday, the first day of competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
