On 20 December, during a 135-minute-long interview on French television, dedicated to topics such as the new law on immigration, the future bill on assisted dying, the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict, Emmanuel Macron was asked about Gérard Depardieu. France’s president could have chosen to be cautious and not comment on a case that has divided France. It would probably have been wiser to have remained silent, but Macron doesn’t do caution; he speaks his mind.
“You will never see me taking part in a manhunt,” he said. As for stripping the actor of the Légion d’honneur, a procedure recently started by his culture minister Rima Abdul Malak, Macron replied, looking straight at the interviewer: “The order of the Légion d’honneur is not a moral order.” His culture minister had “got ahead of herself”. Macron talked about his admiration for the actor, adding that Depardieu had “made France proud”. The backlash was immediate.
Fast rewind. In 2018, Charlotte Arnould filed a lawsuit against Depardieu accusing him of rape. The then 22-year-old aspiring actress had accepted an invitation to the actor’s home, where she says she was raped. Six days later, she went back to Depardieu’s home. She says she was raped again. After a nine-month investigation, the case was dismissed. The police, having viewed CCTV footage from Depardieu’s house at the time of her visits, concluded that she had not been coerced. Arnould challenged the prosecutor’s decision and the case was reopened in 2020. The new investigation is ongoing.
Last April, the investigative news website Mediapart, known for its relentless pursuit of the powerful, published a series of articles in which 13 women accused the actor of sexist remarks and fondling on the set of 11 films shot between 2004 and 2022. Only one of them, Hélène Darras, filed a lawsuit against the actor for groping her on the film set of Disco in 2007 on which she worked as an extra. Depardieu has denied the accusations against him.
It is, however, the 7 December broadcast of the TV documentary Gérard Depardieu: The Fall of an Ogre that has sparked what must now be called l’affaire Depardieu. Using footage leaked to the state broadcaster, the actor is seen during a trip to North Korea in 2018 making lewd remarks about women. His customary Rabelaisian wit has gone; instead he trades pathetic and embarrassing jokes that are anything but funny. It reeks of impotence. In English, it would be called a car crash. In French, we call it a shipwreck.
Those images triggered two reactions in the country. It has even felt at times like a generational war between old and young. Except for one generation, mine, born in the mid-70s, a foot in each camp, trying to keep the peace in a house called France. Feeling vindicated, the women accusing Depardieu see his words as evidence of a life of sexual impropriety, and are now calling the entire French movie industry into question. Their voices are growing louder, and their anger has yielded results. Canada has stripped the actor of the national order of Québec, the Grévin Museum in Paris (the French Madame Tussauds) has removed his waxwork. Depardieu, who has just turned 75, has been removed from future film projects. In many ways, his career appears to be over. Just like Kevin Spacey who, following sexual assault allegations in 2017, disappeared from the screen and stage; though he was found not guilty of all charges earlier this year.
But there is another France, which is saying his “lynching” has gone too far and asks for people to withhold judgment: like any citizen, Depardieu must be considered innocent until proven guilty. It argues that his fame makes him more vulnerable to calumny, not less. As for his crudeness, it may be deplorable but it is not a crime. Last week, a letter published in Le Figaro and signed by nearly 60 big names of the French film and music industry, including Charlotte Rampling, Roberto Alagna and Carla Bruni, lent support to the actor, a victim of a “torrent of hatred” and “spurious amalgamations”. They call him the last monstre sacré (an expression coined by Jean Cocteau to describe Sarah Bernhardt), adding that “attacking Depardieu is attacking art. By his genius as an actor, he contributes to the artistic brilliance of our country […] whatever happens, the mark he has made on us is indelible.” Others add that it doesn’t take much courage to attack the 75-year-old, 20-stone Depardieu, often seen in a wheelchair.
Seen from abroad, evoking genius to defend a man accused of sexual violence will look terribly French. It is. In 1946, when the poet and pornographer Jean Genet, having been convicted 13 times for theft, risked life imprisonment for yet another offence, French artists and intellectuals came out in force. Jacques Prévert, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, André Breton and Jean-Paul Sartre, among others, signed a petition pleading that this genius of French letters deserved amnesty. Genet obtained the presidential pardon. Depardieu has not been convicted of any crime, but the evocation of genius in both cases comes from the same belief that talent, by nature transcendental, elevates the artist.
What Cocteau wrote about Genet in his Journal 1942-1945 could mirror, word for word, what many French people feel about Depardieu: “The bomb Genet: for me, the great event of our era, the typical example of an unacceptable and blinding purity. His work fills me with revolt, repulsion, and wonder. The sparkling of a dark star.”
Depardieu will always remain in France’s collective imagination as a rough diamond, saved from a life of delinquency by the power of the French language and the great texts of literature and theatre. There will never be a Cyrano de Bergerac nor a Georges Danton like him, two parts and performances that worked as mirrors to his life. De Bergerac, the poet who thought himself too ugly to deserve love, and whose wit and frankness made him too many enemies, the man who died with his panache intact. Danton, the smallpox-scarred and audacious revolutionary, the voice of the people, who lived to excess and ended up on the guillotine.
Some artworks are uncancellable. At least, in France.
• Agnès Poirier is a political commentator, writer and critic
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