Shaved head, sunglasses, carnivorous smile; In the skin of Gabriel Matzneff, the actor Jean-Paul Rouve appears unrecognizable, as evidenced by the first images of the film Consent, adapted from the testimony of Vanessa Springora. Posted Thursday, the trailer reveals the beginnings of the meeting between Vanessa, 13, and the fifty-year-old writer, in the mid-1980s, in an atmosphere as chilling as it is disturbingly realistic. Identical first names, same appearances; what has become known as the “Matzneff affair” is replayed on screen.
Read the fileGabriel Matzneff: the case that shakes the world of publishing
Played by Kim Higelin, the young Vanessa “became the lover and the muse of this man celebrated by the cultural and political world. Losing herself in the relationship, she experiences more and more violently the destructive grip that this predator exerts on her”, indicates the synopsis. On the screen, we see Matzneff leaving college, while the subjugated words of admiration of the young girl resonate in the background: “He loves me, he writes to me.” Vanessa’s mother, played by Laetitia Casta, tries to oppose this relationship, which will last two years.
Directed by Vanessa Filho, the feature film adopts the emotion of the book, published in January 2020. Its publication had led to the opening of an investigation by the Paris prosecutor’s office for “rape of a 15-year-old minor”. “We know that old gentlemen attract little children with sweets; Mr. Matzneff, he attracts them with his reputation. The trailer is coming to an end; From a television screen installed in Vanessa’s living room as a child, the Quebec writer Denise Bombardier protests, alone, the complacency towards Gabriel Matzneff, present on the set of the show Apostrophes, in 1990. Integrated into the film, the sequence finds a disturbing resonance, to say the least, in the face of the incarnation of Vanessa Springora’s trauma – and so inconceivable does it seem.
The film is expected in theaters on October 11.
