At the heart of Judith Godrèche’s accusations and both targeted by a complaint for rape of a minor under the age of 15, Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon, aged 77 and 79, are each about to release their new film.
CE2, a new feature film by Jacques Doillon, is still announced for March 24 by its distributor Les Acacias. It tells the story of Claire, a CE2 student, harassed by two schoolchildren, Kevin and Anthony. The director, warned by the child’s mother, did not react and left the children in the same class. Claire and Kevin start by hating each other before gradually getting to know each other.
This film is part of the great tradition of films about childhood, such as Truffaut’s 400 Blows, Maurice Pialat’s Naked Childhood or Ponette, one of Jacques Doillon’s most famous feature films. “For CE2, I first wanted to return to childhood. And I wanted to talk about children aged 7 or 8, who were absent from my filmography,” explained the director in 2021 during a debate reported by Charente Libre. When looking for a topic, “the harassment came right away.” But Doillon chose to look at it through the prism of early childhood: “We talk a lot about middle school, where the consequences can be more serious. But in reality, it exists from the nursery. We already see the dominant and the dominated.”
With CE2, however, Doillon refuses any Manichaeism: “For me, harasser and harassed are victims.” It starts from the postulate that the executioner “was often a victim earlier in his life. So, in my film, there is a victim from the present and another who goes through his suffering in another way. The filming of CE2 took place in the medieval district of Billom, in Puy-de-Dôme, during the summer of 2020. Nora Hamzawi, Alexis Manenti and Doully are together to star in this drama.
Screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2022, the film particularly pleased Brigitte Macron who discovered it at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival in 2021. “I am extremely touched,” she explained, according to reported comments. by Le Monde. “Jacques Doillon has one eye, he knows how to film them [the children] extremely well (…). It’s very important to go see it [the film] if we want to understand certain mechanisms,” said the first lady, who has been involved for several years in the fight against school bullying.
CE2 had something to appeal to schoolchildren. But that was before the complaints and the testimony of Judith Godrèche. Since then, Jacques Doillon has been ousted from the Viva il cinema! of Tours when he was supposed to chair the jury. Is the planned second grade projection compromised? The festival’s press officer assures Le Monde that the organizers do not wish to “make any hasty decisions”.
Benoît Jacquot’s new film, Belle, should be released in theaters during the year. Bringing together Charlotte Gainsbourg and Guillaume Canet as headliners, it tells the peaceful story of a couple, Pierre and Cléa. They welcome Belle, the daughter of a friend, for the year. One day, Belle is found dead and Pierre, alone at home at the time, is accused of the crime. This feature film is an adaptation of a dark novel by Georges Simenon, The Death of Belle. With a budget of 3 million euros, the film is co-produced by Marie-Jeanne Pascal of Macassar Productions and Philippe Carcassonne of Ciné-@. It is currently in post-production.
The release of this feature film remains pending; distributor KMBO declared to Libération on February 8 that it did not want to “make any statement on this subject.” Philippe Carcassonne, for his part, declared: “We will not comment at this stage of the complaint or investigation on other aspects of the debate.”
