She wishes to denounce “impunity and its damage”.
Actress Sarah Grappin denounced Tuesday in L'Obs a controlling relationship with director Alain Corneau, which began in the 1990s when she was 16 and he was 52.
These revelations come a few days after the complaints filed by the actress Judith Godrèche against the filmmakers Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon for rape of a 15-year-old minor, between 1986 and 1992. The actress' testimony convinced her to publicly denounce a similar relationship she had with director Alain Corneau, who offered her her first role in “Le Nouveau Monde” in 1994, when she was 16 years old.
It was during the filming of this film that the filmmaker, rewarded a few years earlier with the César for best director in 1992 for “All Mornings in the World”, kissed her for the first time.
The starting point of a controlling relationship which will last a year and a half.
“Get out of denial”
Aged around fifty at the time, Alain Corneau took her to cafes, to the cinema, or invited her to restaurants.
Several times, he also arranges to meet her at his home.
“Once he welcomed me in an Indian sari, he sat cross-legged and put me astride him.
He penetrated me with his fingers in front, behind, and he said we wouldn't go any further,” the actress tells L'Obs, who mentions digital penetrations on two other occasions in the director's car. .
“To survive”, the young woman tells herself “a great love story”.
“The work of recent years has been to come out of denial,” she confides.
Exchanges with the director became increasingly rare until his death in 2010. Sarah Grappin became aware of the abusive nature of their relationship.
After hesitating to tell her story at the start of the #MeToo movement in France, she has now decided to speak to “denounce impunity and its damage”, indicates L'Obs.
Asked by the weekly, Nadine Trintignant, the ex-wife of the director, described these accusations as “ridiculous”.
The producer of “New World” Jean-Louis Livi declared that he was “struggled” and said he was “revolted” by the testimony of Sarah Grappin.