A few days before the release, on March 28, of her book
À corps Ouverts
(Robert Laffont), Vahina Giocante gave an interview to journalist Audrey Crespo-Mara for the show “Sept à Huit”.
During this interview broadcast on March 24 on TF1, the actress, in turn, denounced Benoît Jacquot's problematic behavior towards women.
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“I am told that Benoît Jacquot likes very young women”
“He’s the only director I name in the book.
And I decided to name him to support the words of Judith Godrèche.
To put myself at her side or behind her,” Vahina Giocante immediately assumes, before returning to her unpleasant experience with the director, on the film
No Scandal
, released in 1999. At the time, she was just old. 18 years old.
“I am told that Benoît Jacquot likes very young women and I actually sense his seductive energy.
And then, there is a scene where I have to get out of bed, in a rather long T-shirt.
He comes to see me and he says to me: 'I would like us to do it again but I would like you to take off your panties.'
“If you are nice, you will make the next film”
Faced with the refusal of the actress who sees “no justification” for this request, Benoît Jacquot would have insisted, using his status as director.
“So I go into the dressing room, I’m furious.
I ask the dresser to have flesh-colored panties, a thong or at least not to wear anything because I feel very vulnerable,” she recalls.
“I go back to the set, I do the scene.
He thinks I'm bare bottom, I won.
And he looks at me with his sideways gaze.
He comes to see me and says: “You see whenever you want, it wasn’t very difficult.”
And I feel, at that moment, this relationship of domination.”
The story could have ended there, but some time later, the man, now 77 years old, would have returned to the charge.
"One day he comes to see me and he says to me: 'I don't know if you understand but, if you are nice, you will make the next film'", denounces the one who is known for her roles in
The Libertine
,
Lila says that
or even
Mata Hari
.
“Many people in the cinema are “above ground””
Like Judith Godrèche who, on March 14, in a poignant speech to the National Assembly, denounced the “incestuous society of cinema”, Vahina Giocante also points the finger at an entire system.
“When someone told me at 17: “Be wary because he likes very young girls”, why is it up to me to be wary?
Why isn’t it up to you to protect us or put up barriers?” she asks.
Already in December 2023, in a long text published on her Facebook account, Vahina Giocante had drawn up an inglorious inventory of this microcosm.
“It is painful for me to note that many people in the cinema are “above ground”, disconnected from this new world which is emerging”, she wrote then, in reaction to the forum of cultural personalities who had supported Gérard Depardieu .
She had also accused the actor of having put “his hand down the panties of an extra during a take”.