Judith Godrèche puts a name to the “feeling of impunity” – Libération

2024-01-07 20:49:07

The actress, who had never named the filmmaker with whom she had a relationship when she was 14 and he was 40, spoke openly on Instagram, while archives from 2011 resurfaced in which he praises a “transgression”.

“The little girl in me can no longer keep silent about this name. His name is Benoît Jacquot.” Judith Godrèche spoke this weekend on her Instagram account, made public for the occasion on Saturday January 6. The portrait of the actress published in Elle a month ago, on December 8, certainly made no secret of the name of the filmmaker with whom the actress had started a relationship at age 14 during the 80s, while he was aged 40, known and seen by an entire community. To the women’s magazine, she declared: “It’s because I have a teenage daughter that I manage to realize what happened to me, to tell myself that I navigated alone in a world without rules or laws.” But the actress never identified the man in question by name in the interview, and maintained this same reserve throughout the promotion of her series “Icon of French Cinema” on Arte. An exercise in satirical autofiction, narrating the career of a breathless actress, signed, directed and performed by her. “I use this art form to undo. Do. To transmit. And I didn’t want her to fall by the wayside. I was even afraid that the subject would disappear behind a name,” she wrote today on Instagram, to explain her wish to “not quote[r] no one” until then.

Things have changed since images of Benoît Jacquot resurfaced, taken from the documentary Ruses of Desire: The Interdict directed by Gérard Miller in 2011. In this recent archive, the filmmaker returns in particular to his relationship with Judith Godrèche while she was still a minor. “Yes, it was a transgression. If only with regard to the law as it is said, we do not have the right in principle, I believe. A girl like her, like this Judith, who was in fact 15 years old [14 selon elle, ndlr], and I was 40, I didn’t have the right. But she didn’t give a damn about that, and even she was very excited about it, I would say.” Saying he was aware of making people envious, the one who gave the teenager her first major role with the film Beggars in 1986 added: “In a certain way, making cinema is a kind of cover. […] for morals of this type.”

Explaining that “she probably would never have expressed herself in such a personal way on these networks if this documentary had not fallen under [s]eyes”, Judith Godrèche denounced the “perversion” and the “feeling of impunity” to which these remarks testify. From the documentary from which the extract is taken, freely accessible on Youtube, we find the following description: “The psychoanalysts and columnist Gérard Miller collects the testimonies of personalities and anonymous people who have transgressed their principles to live their love.” Demonstrations of support for the actress have been pouring in since the speech, she also having written about her fear of no longer working and of regretting this moment of “excitement”: “Many people will turn their backs on me.”