The proclaimed heirs of the New Wave are caught in the #MeToo storm.
After Benoît Jacquot, the filmmaker Jacques Doillon is under fire from accusations, and in the sights of justice.
Invited this Thursday, February 8 on France Inter, Judith Godrèche reiterated her accusations of abuse and violence against Benoît Jacquot, twenty-five years her senior, who directed her on screen and maintained for several years, without hiding, a relationship with her from the age of 14.
At the microphone of journalist Sonia Devillers, the 51-year-old actress also blamed Jacques Doillon, 79 years old.
By evoking facts which date back to the filming of
La Fille de 15 ans
, released in 1989. A film shot by Jacques Doillon when Judith Godrèche was that age, and was in a relationship with Benoît Jacquot.
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Still on France Inter, she recounted an intimate scene with Jacques Doillon, in the presence of Jane Birkin, who was then the director's companion.
“All of a sudden, [Doillon] decides that there is a love scene, a sex scene between him and me,” she said.
“I take off my sweater, I'm shirtless, he gropes me, makes out with me.”
Asked to know if Jacques Doillon then “abused” her, the actress acquiesced.
“What happened in Jane's house
(Birkin, her partner at the time, editor's note)
, in Doillon's office, no one saw it,” she explained, adding that she had not never before told these alleged facts.
On the judicial side, a source close to the case explained to AFP on Thursday that the complaint filed Tuesday by Judith Godrèche targeted not only Benoît Jacquot but also Jacques Doillon and therefore that the investigation opened following this complaint in fact targeted the two directors.
Entrusted to the minor protection brigade, it concerns “the offenses of rape of a minor under 15 years of age by a person in authority, rape, violence by a partner, and sexual assault of a minor over 15 years of age by a person in authority”.
“All of the facts denounced took place between 1986 and 1992,” according to the public prosecutor, i.e. the period when Benoît Jacquot and Judith Godrèche were a couple.
“There is such a feeling of impunity”
Jacques Doillon, director of
Rodin
,
Ponette
or
The Little Criminal
, and father of actresses Lou and Lola Doillon, is also the subject of new accusations.
Actress Anna Mouglalis details to Le
Monde
a sexual assault she says she was the victim of.
“It was the summer of 2011,” she remembers.
Jacques Doillon had just had my companion at the time, Samuel Benchetrit, shoot with his daughter, Lou Doillon, for the film
Un enfant de toi
.
Samuel invited Doillon to join us at my family home, near Uzès.
(...) One evening after dinner, there were only two of us in the room.
It was in the stairwell on the landing which opened onto my daughter's bedroom and mine where I was going to join Samuel who had gone to bed earlier.
He forcefully kissed me and I pushed him away.
It's astonishing to attempt something like this, in these conditions.
There is such a feeling of impunity, such reification.”
For her part, Isild le Besco - who, like Judith Godrèche, had an affair with Benoît Jacquot - denounced a form of sexual blackmail by Jacques Doillon in 2000, when she hoped to star in the film
Carrément à l'ouest
, released in 'Next year.
“When I refused to sleep with him, he removed me from the project and gave the role to his daughter,” she accuses.
“My memories are vague (...) It was quite subtle, unsaid.
Right after I refused, he told me he was going to give the role to Lou.”
Asked by
Le Monde
, Jacques Doillon did not wish to respond.
Through his lawyer, Marie Dosé, he informed AFP of discovering “these accusations through the press”.
“He refutes them forcefully and is eager to explain himself in court,” she also said.