In conversation | A burning Consent of today

The film adaptation of the book The consent, by Vanessa Springora, directed by Vanessa Filho, opens Friday in Quebec while in France, the cinema industry is hit by the #metoo wave. Our journalists Chantal Guy and Manon Dumais discuss this coincidence which is not quite a coincidence…

Chantal Guy: Vanessa Springora’s book was a real bomb in the publishing world in 2020, and it is the turn of French cinema to examine its conscience. But in fact, isn’t an entire culture that must question the notion of consent, its exploitation of very young girls under the cover of art?

Manon Dumais: An entire society must question itself, yes. If women remained silent for so long in the literary world and the film industry, it is because they were conditioned by society to accept being treated like small staff, interchangeable commodities.

What has amazed me since the Depardieu affair is to see that the problem seems generational. Few actresses of Deneuve’s generation came to the defense of actresses who dared to denounce reprehensible behavior.

CG: It’s generational. They rather defended Depardieu! I liked certain Benoît Jacquot films, but it is clear that in the 1980s, when I was a teenager myself, I was stuffed with French films starring young girls who “ seduce” men who are much too old for them. It was a real epidemic, it almost seemed as if the directors were in competition with each other for young actresses. The disenchanted, The 15 year old girl, The cheeky one, White wedding, The little… Springora’s book contributed greatly to the awakening of all these women who are speaking out at the moment.

MD: In the 1980s, I often felt shivers of disgust when seeing young actresses in the arms of actors older than my father was at the time. I still remember the shock I had when I saw the trailer for Descent into hell (1986): Claude Brasseur stretched himself over the naked body of Sophie Marceau, who played his own daughter in The party (1980). I’m tired of seeing the age gap widen in the cinema between the hero and his fiancée. The actors are getting older, but their female partners are getting younger from one film to the next.

CG: Hence the importance of having female filmmakers, of achieving parity, of having film sets where actresses are respected. Not only did these directors benefit from a system which gave them all the powers, all the financing, all the film prices, and allowed them all the transgressions, in full view of everyone, but they also imposed their extremely reductive visions of the feminine. We are here right in the middle of what feminists call the male gauze [le regard masculin].

MD: We also need more women in photography, editing, writing, etc. One of the best things to happen in film recently is intimacy coordination. It was also at the request of Kim Higelin, who plays Vanessa Springora in the feature film, that Vanessa Filho herself coordinated the scenes of a sexual nature between her and Jean-Paul Rouve, who plays Gabriel Matzneff. Despite this, I had a lot of difficulty watching the film. I had to constantly remind myself that the actress was 21 years old and not 14. In her book, Vanessa Springora revealed just enough for us to understand what happened between her and this pedophile that the Parisian intelligentsia protected. How far should we go in illustrating the facts? Looking back, what I remember most about the film is the actor’s chilling voice and Matzneff’s manipulative words.

CG: Despite good ideas and very accurate interpretations – I understand that Rouve was traumatized by this role – it was the whole angle of the film that caused me problems, and a lot of discomfort. Springora’s book was powerful because it was a regaining of power over his story, its goal was to catch Matzneff in his own trap, to “lock him in a book”. In a poignant passage, we can read: “I am forever 14, it is written. » Now, through this film, the character of Vanessa will be 14 years old forever too; we only see the woman appear at the end, when she begins to write. It’s her that I would have liked to see more of, her journey, even if it means working through flashbacks. The sexual scenes are painful to watch, obviously, but I felt in the position of a voyeur, whereas the novel never gave me that impression.

MD: Vanessa Filho’s goal was to lock the beast into the film, but it’s true that she also condemns the author to remain her young prey. I too would have wanted the Vanessa of 2013 [Élodie Bouchez] appear earlier. At the same time, I understand that the filmmaker wanted to detach herself from the book by putting forward the words of Matzneff, whose books I have never read and I have no intention of reading one. alone. In this way, she dismantles the mechanisms of her thought. Let’s just say it came for me.

CG: It was Vanessa’s confinement that upset me in this film, with no one to protect her. She dreams of writing, but cannot put the words together while being vampirized by Matzneff. When she looks out the window at his friends having fun outside while he waits for a blowjob. When she understands, while reading her diaries, that she is just one among others. He made her believe that she was “different”, “more mature, more intelligent” – this is exactly how “pimps” talk to teenage girls to lure them into prostitution. Or that directors maneuver to offer them a role in a film by wanting to sleep with them.

MD: One of the heartbreaking scenes in the film is when she discovers that he is dining at a restaurant with complacent friends and his new conquest, who is a little younger than her. At 15, 16 years old, she already feels old, withered, to use Denise Bombardier’s words during her confrontation with Matzneff in Apostrophesan extract of which we see in the film.

Besides, what made me want to scream was that everyone – Vanessa’s mother, family friends, Matzneff’s entourage, the literary world, the media – knew that he was a pedophile. , but consented to him sleeping with boys and girls aged 8 to 14.

Last November, a woman claimed that her own adoptive father – a doctor! – drugged her from the age of 4 to 13 to give her to his friend Matzneff. Why do so many people turn a blind eye to these despicable acts or become complicit with such monsters?

CG: I happen to think that, despite the Revolution of 1789, French society never freed itself from its fascination with the aristocracy, which had all the rights. And that it has made art a form of aristocracy, into which only those who submit to its diktats enter, in a misguided idea of ​​libertinism, because where we consent to there being victims , there is only pleasure for the aggressors. At 14, Vanessa Springora had no chance in this environment of accepted predation, which Matzneff took advantage of. Complacency comes from the fear of being banished by those in power, whom we prefer to flatter rather than resist them. And the higher you go in the hierarchy, the more you only find men. In this, Denise Bombardier had a lot of courage, because it was not only Matzneff that she resisted, but everyone on the set of Pivot, and also an environment, which moreover resisted her. very badly taken. What I find astonishing about what is happening in France these days is the relentless eloquence of these women who are finally speaking out. It may be a revolution.

The consent takes place on Friday.