One-on-one with Emmanuelle Béart | To buckle the buckle

From 15 to 18 years old, Emmanuelle Béart lived in Montreal. She had never revealed it publicly, but it was to rebuild herself, after having been a victim of incest from the ages of 10 to 14. The actress talks about it in her first film, the moving documentary A silence so loud (co-directed with Anastasia Mikova), which will be broadcast on November 22 on TV5. We took advantage of her visit to the Cinemania festival, where she is co-president of the jury, to talk to her about it.

When did you want to make a documentary about incest?

First, I tried to adapt Christine Angot [autrice du livre L’inceste]. For me it took the form of fiction. What was certain was that I said to myself: OK, you’ve been through this thing, it’s painful, the after-effects, you carry them around all your life, but it’s important to do something with it.

A material for creation…

Exactly. Not to let this kind of painful ball invade me. Then I told myself that my experience could allow me to meet other people. It was important to take the camera and provoke not only the words of the witnesses I was filming, but to be able to open a space for societal speech. There is a sort of chain of solidarity which is Angot, which is The big family [roman autobiographique de Camille Kouchner]which is Neige Sinno and sad tiger [qui vient de remporter le prix Femina]…

Which I started reading and which immediately addresses, like your documentary, the concept of traumatic amnesia.

It’s a wonderful novel. I said to myself that it would be great to succeed in being part of this movement. And I realized that it was not fiction that seemed to me to be the best way to achieve this, but documentary.

We feel that you give confidence to the people you meet because you have also experienced what they have suffered.

There is, yes, this common crossing. I knew what I wanted to talk about. We talk about emotional anesthesia, we talk about sexuality. I find that the documentary we made goes very far in terms of honesty of words.

What’s fascinating is that you meet people at the very moment when they are either in the legal process, or in the process of recovering the memory of this trauma. All this is happening in front of us.

And in real time in front of us first, the directors! Because we are faced with beings who are of absolute courage and who say things as they are. And so as a result, I myself identify things that I had never thought about in my case. Suddenly it affects me too. I speak up, I bounce back, without ever wanting to be the central character of the film.

It’s this spontaneity that makes people open up. There are also very strong moments that are linked to you. I’m thinking of this psychologist who told you that some victims come to think that they can only be loved by their body, and who made you react.

I had never thought about it. Here too, it’s done when we’re filming. That is to say, all of a sudden the camera is on me and he says something that shatters me, literally. Each experience is unique, and that is very important to say. We are not in a large group of incested people who are all the same. Of course not. But there are things that are deeply common in the aftereffects.

Obviously, this comment from the psychologist on sexualization makes me think of the cinema. I think back to Berri, to Chabrol, to Rivette, to Sautet, with whom you toured from the start. You realize in the documentary that you have sexualized your body. But I wonder to what extent it was filmmakers who sexualized you?

Yes, I think that indeed, the directors took something that came out of me. But why was it coming out of me? Because there was something that I certainly provoked, which was like a sort of reappropriation of her femininity, of her sexuality. Something that would not belong to him, but which would be my creation. But this creation is dangerous because it can take you outside of yourself. So, what is the active part, what is the unconscious part? I don’t know all that. And what did the directors with whom I performed guess? At the same time, you were talking about Sautet. Sautet allowed me to rest because there was no such aspect of my sexuality at all. Afterwards, we know that cinema loves fresh flesh and that when there is a pretty girl, she is generally, yes, sexualized.

In French cinema in particular, perhaps…

Yes maybe ! (She smiles)

I’ve already heard you in an interview talking about the place of actresses in cinema, who we think less about after 50. Is the cliché confirmed?

You have to deal with it, but yes, of course. It’s obvious, especially when you’ve been very, very pretty, that there’s something that attracted directors to that place. What would be terrible for an actress is to want to retain this tone in order to continue to be desired. And yet, that’s how we experience it. At the same time, for me, it’s out of the question. And besides, that’s why instinctively, 13 years ago, I left the theater. Because I told myself that in the theater, there is a place, a creative space, where we have the right to grow old.

The image is not fixed in the theater…

Not frozen at all! It’s almost a space of physical freedom. What’s crazy is that I had the instinct 13 years ago to tell myself: get out of the theater! There is of course the meeting with great theater directors. But still, there’s still a fucking survival instinct in me, actually. I know where to go when to turn the corner. And now it’s the staging that interests me. That doesn’t mean I won’t play again, but I had a lot of fun directing, even if it was a documentary. I have a fiction project. A novel adaptation that I can’t talk about, but which goes completely elsewhere.

I was rereading an interview that you gave me in Montreal, almost 25 years ago, to Sentimental destinies [d’Olivier Assayas]. We were talking about Montreal and you told me: “Don’t look for a rational explanation, there isn’t one. I was supposed to come for 15 days and I stayed for three years.” It’s certain that in light of the documentary, knowing now what you suffered from the ages of 10 to 14, I imagine that it was also the survival instinct that pushed you to settle in Montreal at 15. .

Yes, I had to leave. I needed to break away from this past, I needed to break away from my family, I needed to be somewhere else. And Montreal has been very, very, very important to me. The family I landed with, my studies at Marie-de-France. There is a kindness here, a hospitality. I am very moved every time I come back. It’s really a very special age, 15-18 years old. Great friendships, great loves. There is something that is fundamental to the structure of a human being. It’s the end of adolescence, just before adulthood. Because afterwards, I return to Paris and it’s very quickly Manon from the sources…

And I imagine a fortiori that it is all the more fundamental when we are fleeing a trauma and we want to get rid of bad memories. Have you experienced this traumatic amnesia?

No. No way. I prefer to have been confronted with reality. It probably helped me heal faster. I’ve often been asked what it meant to me to make this documentary, and I didn’t know. When the documentary was released in France [en septembre], it was a tsunami. It was on the front page of all the newspapers. It was completely crazy. Now I know. It’s over. It’s closed. That doesn’t mean I can’t help other people through this documentary, but for me, it’s over.

A meeting will take place with Emmanuelle Béart on Saturday, November 11 at 4 p.m. at the Sofitel as part of the Cinemania Festival. The event is free and open to the public.

A silence so loud (co-directed with Anastasia Mikova) will be broadcast on November 22 on TV5.