2023-12-21 14:42:49
The biggest surprise in the recent scandal involving Gérard Depardieu is that he is said to be a prude in private. You really wouldn’t have thought that possible. But his daughter Julie and other family members claim so. “With his children he is an extremely modest, sensitive and even prudish person,” says one in the „Sunday Newspaper“ published letter in defense of the actor known from films such as “The Last Metro”, “Cyrano of Bergerac” and “Asterix and Obelix”. “Of course,” the letter continued, those closest to him were “often shocked” by his statements. At the same time, his family senses “collective anger” and an “unprecedented conspiracy” against the faltering national shrine.
A documentary recently broadcast by France TV shows Depardieu making sexist remarks – in North Korea, of all places – at one point in the face of a ten-year-old girl riding a horse, which is described as particularly serious. “When it gallops,” Depardieu comments unmoved, “then she has an orgasm.” At another point he says: “I weigh 124 kilos, with an erection 126.”
In response to public outrage, the Paris wax museum moved the Depardieu double into the archives, and a Belgian nest revoked his honorary citizenship. The Canadian province of Quebec stripped him of his knighthood of the local order. France’s Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, criticized Depardieu’s behavior towards women as a “disgrace to France” and announced a disciplinary procedure with the Legion of Honor. Depardieu’s lawyers criticized her statement as “another blow to the already dying presumption of innocence.”
Patrick Dewaere, Miou-Miou and Depardieu (left) in “Die Ausgebufften” from 1974
Source: picture alliance / Richter Collection
What would have passed as a successful joke in 1974, at the time of hits like “Die Ausgebufften”, today meets a zeitgeist that can probably be described as even more prudish than the private Depardieu. As a reminder: In “Les Valseuses”, as the film that made Depardieu a star is originally called, the actor and his colleague Patrick Dewaere have an open three-way relationship with Miou-Miou, who is barely of legal age. On train journeys they suck on young mothers’ breasts without being asked. They pick up a sprightly senior citizen named Jeanne, played by Jeanne Moreau, from prison and treat her so well that nothing can happen after that and she takes her own life with a shot through the vagina.
Battered lifestyle, renovated customs
If that sounds a bit strong today, you can appreciate how times have changed. Only Depardieu, the third of six children of a tinsmith who, according to his autobiography, prostituted himself to men as a ten-year-old and later earned extra money by digging up corpses to sell their jewelry, appears to have remained true to himself. A few years ago he commented on his work in well over two hundred films with the sentence: “I’m still the little rowdy from Châteauroux who does good business.”
His battered lifestyle and renovated customs have increasingly clashed in recent years. Despite a liver transplant and four bypasses, he says he still drinks 14 bottles of wine a day, pees in airplane aisles if necessary, and sometimes falls off his scooter in downtown Paris at 1.8 per mille.
In 2013, Putin personally granted him Russian citizenship and also has that of the United Arab Emirates. Ukraine declared him persona non grata in 2015 after he attracted unpleasant attention with the statement “I love Russia and Ukraine, which is part of Russia.” After the fighting began, Depardieu declared that he did not agree with the “fratricidal war”, called for a ceasefire and donated theater fees to Ukrainian victim families. In front of the camera, he likes to read texts from pieces of paper that he sticks to his teammates’ foreheads.
In short, if Depardieu were German, Til Schweiger would have peace and quiet.
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More serious than all this unsavory nonsense are allegations of rape and abuse. An investigation has been ongoing since the end of 2020. Actress Charlotte Arnould accuses Depardieu of raping her twice in his Paris apartment in 2018. In addition, actress Hélène Darras recently reported her colleague for sexual assault during filming in 2007. The next complaint was made this week by the Spanish journalist and author Ruth Baza. Numerous other women have accused Depardieu of sexual assault in the past. The actor, who turns 75 on December 27th, denies all allegations.
Now President Emmanuel Macron has intervened – and defended Depardieu: “There is one thing you will never see me doing, and that is manhunts,” Macron said on the French television station France 5 on Wednesday evening. “I detest that.” He is a “great admirer” of the “great actor” who “made France famous”. Depardieu makes France “proud”. Depardieu himself had previously, insulted, offered his cross of the Legion of Honor. Macron doesn’t want to know anything about it. There are, said the president, “perhaps victims, but there is also the presumption of innocence.” One should not slip into an “age of suspicion”.
The word of power was due. There is little to add. Of course, as befits a constitutional state, the outcome of the investigation must be awaited. Then there may be a trial. Prejudices are shameful and worthy of neither the Grande Nation nor any other Western country. Wax museums are of course free to move exhibits into the basement in response to distasteful comments. Who, if not they, could cope with the accusation of spinelessness?
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