Julie Gayet portrays women she admires in “Together we are stronger”

It was Agnès Varda who gave Julie Gayet her first major film role in The Hundred and One Nights of Simon, in 1995. A confidence that brought her luck and carried her. She is very involved in the 50/50 collective which aims for parity in the cinema, for the rights of women and the fight against the violence of which they are victims. She has also been involved with the Women’s Foundation since the launch of the #MeToo movement in 2017. In this vein, she organizes the Women’s Foundation gala every year as well as the Gisèle Halimi prize.

She is featured in the thread Like an actress by Sébastien Bailly since March 8, 2023 with Benjamin Biolay and published on the same date Together we are stronger to Stock editions. She is also preparing her Twin Sisters Festival which will take place in Rochefort (Charente Maritime) from June 27 to July 1, 2023.

franceinfo: This book recounts your commitment to the paths of feminism through portraits of women. Finally, you talk about what happened and how much women have given you the desire to move forward and the strength to be the woman you have become.

Julie Gayet: Yes, and without words, with deeds. And I who am quite modest, who am quite discreet, I like being behind the roles, expressing myself through my films, through what I do. And there, I wondered why we don’t show the concrete actions taken by other women in the associations. What is being done, they are doing it with so much generosity. In short, I wanted to highlight them.

I started these portraits as I was making my documentaries and then at one point, I said to myself: but I can’t make them talk without talking about me.

Julie Gayet

at franceinfo

I had to talk about myself and I stuck to it. Because I am convinced that in reality, we are all feminists, all feminists. It was almost like psychoanalysis. It was very moving. I took a lot of time, a lot more than I thought, and I had a lot of modesty. We expose ourselves when we write, in fact.

This is exactly what we find in this book. There is a starting point, it is the “sensitivity to experience injustice”. This is what connects you to all the destinies of women that you tell, but also ultimately, to your own journey. Have you often experienced this injustice?

Yes, but I didn’t see it as an injustice. There is this very strange unconscious awareness, when in fact, obviously, society infuses, that we become an object of desire, that there are wandering hands. I remember back in high school on the subway, then through movies like The big traffic jam by Luigi Comencini (1979).

This film was a revelation for you, as the violence of the rape at the end, under the eyes of motorists who do not intervene, really struck you. Did it change your life by the way?

It was an impact… There, I understand what I’m actually afraid of. And I perceive, I also understand why my brothers are afraid for me. In fact, me, I feel all that and my brothers say to me: “But you don’t want to go out like that in a skirt!“, not because they don’t want me to go out and turn on the boys, but because they’re scared of me. And it’ll take me a lifetime to figure out why. And I think that’s why I say that, even the boys, we are all impregnated by this violence. They carried my mother’s legacy, like me, I carried it and it took me a few years to understand. I must have been 33 years old , when my mother, one day in the street, said to me: “He is dead“And I knew she had been the victim of violence, she had never spoken to me about it, my brothers knew it and that is why they were a little afraid.

You also pay homage to your mother. She is really the starting point.

My mother is my best friend, she is my confidante. We really share a lot of things so there is this strong relationship.

Julie Gayet

at franceinfo

I didn’t understand why I always needed to protect her, even though she’s the one who protects me and who gives me so much strength, but over the years, I also understood that in the end, it wasn’t it happened to me, hence the question of legitimacy, of knowing why I am speaking out, why did I write this book on women, women’s associations. Well, it’s for her.

This book also makes it possible to break down taboos on, for example, violence against women. There are many women who suffer the blows either from their companion or from other men around them and who do not yet dare to talk about it. There is always this feeling of guilt.

Yes, then go see other women. I know that I have always had trouble speaking. When I was making my documentary on the place of women in cinema, I asked: so what is a women’s film? I was always told: The Piano Lesson by Jane Campion. Well, Jane Campion says, “But if all the women recognized themselves in this character, it is because she is mute.“. And then, it grabbed me to realize that. How women, we don’t dare to speak. That’s the problem. But you’re not alone, we’re all here , there are associations and we are in the process, I promise you, with the Women’s Foundation, of trying to raise funds, run campaigns, get things moving. I hope that even me, in relation to everything, in relation to my family… I don’t know, it’s like a circle has come full circle, something that’s important for me to say.