Even before its publication, the autobiographical story The consent promised to be the literary event of 2020. And for good reason: the editor Vanessa Springora relates the relationship of control exercised over her by the pedophile writer Gabriel Matzneff when she was only 14 years old and he , 49 years. After years of impunity and complacent adulation, the ogre who made a career out of chronicling his sexual devouring of children was finally ostracized. By bringing to the big screen what has become a famous affair, but which is at its core an intimate drama, Vanessa Filho has opted for a treatment that is both sensitive and frontal.
The director’s approach, which takes the splits, is all the more wise as the subject itself is as delicate as it is shocking. It must be said that the author Vanessa Springora participated in the process of writing the script, as Vanessa Filho explained to us in an interview. François Pirot (Elsewhere if I’m there) also collaborated there.
Which scenario takes up the plot of the source while maintaining the narrative focus on young Vanessa Springora. Not only do we follow her, but it is her only point of view that we embrace.
Thus we witness, in a proximity that induces unease which is deliberately imposed on us, the initial inebriation resulting from a grooming formidable, then to the mental drift caused by an impeccable cognitive diversion and, finally, to the subsequent disenchantment, when the very young girl painfully regains grip on the sordid reality.
With clinical precision, but without pressing or highlighting anything, Vanessa Filho shows how said relationship of control is methodically put in place by Gabriel Matzneff (who himself described his version of his affair with the teenager in The Apple of my eyeone of the volumes of his long-term journal published in 1993).
Spotted at the age of 13 during a social dinner, when she was clearly bored among all these adults dazzled by the literary tenor, the young protagonist initially seemed uncomfortable when the latter addressed her ( the comments from the table are nauseating). A secret but diligent courtship follows…
And the lonely teenager to feel “special”, to feel “the chosen one”…
Dichotomous device
In the lead role, Kim Higelin delivers a skin-deep performance. With astonishing naturalness, she manages to accomplish the feat, as if it were self-evident, of embodying the dilemma stated by the author in her story: “How can we admit that we have been abused when we cannot deny having been consenting? When, in this case, we felt desire for this adult who was quick to take advantage of it? »
Sometimes determined, sometimes distraught, full of confidence then annihilated, Kim Higelin’s Vanessa is deconstructed before our helpless gaze. In this regard, the very last shot, where Élodie Bouchez plays an adult Vanessa Springora who sits at the keyboard at the start of reconstruction, proves particularly moving.
In the meantime, however, there are sequences that are difficult to sustain. Because the director doesn’t shy away. That is to say, while treating her protagonist with infinite empathy, Vanessa Filho confronts us, spectators, with the raw and grim reality of what pedophile influence is. And it does so by establishing an interesting dichotomous device.
Indeed, the filmmaker presents, in the image, intimate scenes which are eloquent without being explicit (note that Kim Higelin was 22 years old at the time of filming), but by resorting, initially, to a slightly vaporous, precisely in line with the dazzled (or stunned) point of view of the young Vanessa Springora.
Later, the style changes and becomes harsher, in line, again, with the heroine’s loss of illusion. These are subtle formal details, but they speak volumes about the care and thought that Vanessa Filho brought to her production. Ultimately, The consent do not leave unscathed. Again, on purpose.