Icon of French Cinema is a surreal comedy about a French film star who returns to Paris after a decade in LA expecting a glorious comeback, but ends up playing a singing hamster. The series has become France’s biggest streaming hit this year, sparking outraged debate about the French cinema establishment failing to face up to #MeToo. And through flashbacks, it tells a darker, autobiographical story about how Judith Godrèche, the show’s writer, director and lead actor, was groomed as a 14-year-old in the 1980s by one of France’s top film directors.
“I had to tell this story for the next generation,” says Godrèche, now living back in Paris. “My own daughter had turned 15, she was a dancer and actor at an LA arts school. She was walking around in her leotard, and I had this fear. I thought, ‘What happened to me must not ever happen to her.’ I had to write this for her and her friends. For all the young girls.”
Scenes in which Godrèche’s 14-year-old character is steadily served alcohol by adults at a film awards dinner until she passes out, or is shouted at, or made to take her top off on set, have made the series of a word-of-mouth hit and prompted soul-searching in France. Godrèche says she had no allies in the industry as a teenager, no adults ever stepped in. “None, zero. And they’re still hiding,” she says. “People who are still in this industry are still not coming forward. And I’m not here to carry out a witch-hunt, but you might expect a little compassion … It’s bizarre for everyone that I’m suddenly coming out and telling this story. The omertà in the industry is still so strong.”
Godrèche, who was born in Paris and lived with her father after her parents’ separation, began acting at nine. In 1986, aged 14, she was cast in Les Mendiants, a film by the acclaimed arthouse director Benoît Jacquot, then 40, and became his girlfriend. At 16 she put her earnings into buying a flat with Jacquot and their relationship was in the media glare. Godrèche says that she was groomed in full sight of the French film industry and journalists, with celebrity magazines in the 1980s photographing the couple at events, romanticising their relationship and sexualising her as a lusty teenager in “first love” for an older man. She managed to leave aged 20. Jacquot’s agent did not reply to a request for comment.
Godrèche chose not to name Jacquot in her series. “I wanted the subject to exist in all its scope and resonance, not to become a niche story about him,” she says. “This series is about exposing a whole system. I thought if I named him, every article would have him in the headline, eclipsing a show which represents the first time I had fully embraced my voice as a writer.”
But the success of Icon of French Cinema – a co-production between the US studio A24 and the French-German channel Arté – changed things. It tapped into a moment of painful reckoning in France over the grooming of teenage girls by older men in the arts. Vanessa Springora’s 2019 book Consent, about being groomed aged 14 by the then 50-year-old writer Gabriel Matzneff in the 1980s, was recently adapted into a hit film. Paris prosecutors opened an investigation of Matzneff for the rape of minors, which is ongoing. Adèle Haenel, who began her career as a child actor, last year left the French film industry because of its “general complacency” towards sexual predators.
Godrèche has received scores of letters from women who identified with her story. “Women said, ‘I’m from your generation, and when I was hit on by an older man as a teenager I thought it was OK because I wanted to be like you, you were so beautiful and glamorous and I loved your movies.’ I felt a responsibility. I felt that, because of me, other 14- and 15-year-olds were influenced to find it normal and acceptable. There was a feeling of guilt.”
Earlier this month, Godrèche was sent a link to a 2011 TV documentary in which Jacquot spoke about their relationship. He said that the teenage Godrèche “didn’t give a fuck” and was “very turned on” by their age difference. He said the film world admired and envied him for the relationship, and he found that pleasing.
That’s when Godrèche named Jacquot on social media. “The little girl in me can no longer keep this name quiet,” she wrote.
Godrèche says that, as she watched the documentary: “My entire body started shaking and I threw up … I was overwhelmed with disgust and extreme anger, and suddenly I understood why I had left France. How could that be broadcast in 2011?”
In 2017, she was one of the first actors to speak to the New York Times about the film producer Harvey Weinstein, whom she said attempted to assault her in a hotel at the Cannes film festival when she was 26. Weinstein was last year convicted of rape and sexual assault in LA.
But many people feel the much closer-knit world of French arthouse cinema is yet to face up to #MeToo. Feminists reacted with outrage last month after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, described the actor Gérard Depardieu – who is under formal investigation for rape as well as facing scrutiny over sexist comments – as the target of a “manhunt”. Depardieu has denied all allegations.
Godrèche’s series is now likely to be sold worldwide. “I don’t want this to stay in France,” she says. “It’s important that it’s not covered up. I want it to be seen by other audiences. Especially because it’s thanks to America that I was able to write it. It’s thanks to the #MeToo movement in America – what happened with Weinstein – that I thought maybe this could be produced. There’s this resonance from what happened in the US, and it gave me strength.”
The story of her grooming, sadly, has resonated with audiences. “I hope it will give strength to those feeling loneliness or guilt like mine. All my life I have tried to somehow free myself from this part of my childhood, and find a way not to look for validation from him and the world he’s part of. One of my biggest fears was getting bad reviews in all the papers that have made a god out of him.”
Alma Struve, the 14-year-old actor who plays the young Godrèche – including in a scene in which she has to take her shirt off and kiss an older director in dozens of takes – was surprised that this could have really happened. “It was interesting for me to see how shocked she was,” Godrèche says.
Struve never removed her clothes: there was a body double and an intimacy adviser. “In my time, I couldn’t speak to anyone. No one ever even asked ‘Are you OK?’ I found it quite revolutionary today what is possible,” Godrèche says.
The series cuts between two eras – opulent modern-day Paris and a darker 1980s France – and has been hailed for its slightly absurd and joyously self-deprecating tone. In the modern scenes, Godrèche deliberately shot an idealised tourist version of Paris which she hankered for while in the US. The British comedian and writer Liz Kingsman plays Godrèche’s agent, and they messily eat large amounts of food in various restaurant scenes. “I wanted some form of honesty,” Godrèche says. “I want to eat the cake entirely, not take a little bite and say my line. There’s a sensual aspect to it. Let’s not be afraid of what we are, of our desires or our mistakes, or of having needs in this patriarchal world where we’re always making ourselves small. Let’s not be afraid to take up space and have teeth!”
The modern-day outfits are comically over the top. “You’re thinking, ‘What is she doing on this tiny, tiny boat dressed like she’s in Gone with the Wind?’” Godrèche says. The subplot about a Filipino housekeeper, and its final twist, was a true story and the character is played by Godrèche’s former housekeeper herself.
Meanwhile Godrèche’s daughter, Tess Barthélemy, plays her fictionalised daughter in the series – but until now didn’t know her mother’s story. “I felt guilty all through my life, and it’s a story that I never told my kids,” Godrèche says.
Grooming is complex and needs to be unpicked, she says. “These people usually come to you as protectors. They become a parental figure – in the show you see her going from her dad to this director. I wanted to show a young girl who you see with her father, and then a man the same age as her father. Her mother’s not around, there’s some sort of dysfunctionality.”
However, the series’ 50-year-old film-star character copes with modern life with a light touch. “She never had a childhood – there’s a part of her which never grew up. People would say to me, ‘You became an adult extremely young.’ But it was more like being turned into an adult by your life story, society and the way people treated you. That didn’t mean you really became an adult, or that you have actually have ever felt like one.”
Now, Godrèche hopes the support shown by audiences in France will spread worldwide. “There is a feeling of sisterhood that is absolutely incredible,” she says.
