Was another episode of French cinema's #MeToo about to play out, on Tuesday, March 5, at a Paris criminal court? All the signs seemed to indicate this: British actress Charlotte Lewis was suing filmmaker Roman Polanski for defamation, as he called her a liar in an interview with the French magazine Paris Match in December 2019. At the time, the director of J'accuse (An Officer and a Spy) was being asked about accusations of sexual assault and rape made against him by several women, including Lewis. Nine years earlier, at a press conference held in the middle of the Cannes Film Festival, she had recounted having been assaulted during a casting session organized at Polanski's Paris home in 1983, when she was 16 years old.

"You see, the first quality of a good liar is an excellent memory. Charlotte Lewis is always mentioned in the list of my accusers without ever pointing out these contradictions," said Polanski, citing several successive statements by the plaintiff, in which she evoked a romantic relationship with him. When asked by journalists: "But what interest would she have in falsely accusing you?" Polanski replied: "What do I know? Frustration? You'd have to ask shrinks, scientists, historians. What do I know?"

Polanski, who's 90, didn't make the trip to court, leaving his two lawyers, Delphine Meillet and Alain Jakubowicz, to represent him. Lewis, 56, was there. "I had an imperative need to clear my name," she said. At the hearing, she repeated her accusations about that evening in 1983, when she found herself alone with the director after the friend who had accompanied her had gone to bed. "That's when he raped me," she said. She explained her long silence: "He was like a father to me, a mentor. I didn't realize the seriousness of what had happened to me until 30 years later."

The defense emphasized her contradictions, exhuming an interview she gave in 1999 to the British tabloid News of the World, in which she testifies to her admiration for the director, who entrusted her with a role in his 1986 film Pirates. "I was fascinated by him, and I wanted to be his lover (...) I probably desired him more than he did me," she confided at the time. The debate drifted on to the tabloid's methods, and the actress vigorously contested the statements attributed to her and became angry. The defense reminded her that she had been paid for this interview. The hearing got bogged down and Lewis gave in. "Do you regret having spoken?" asked her lawyer, Benjamin Chouai. "Yes. I do regret it. I went through a smear campaign. It nearly destroyed my life. Today, if a woman comes to me and says she's been raped and asks if she should reveal it, I'd say, 'No. Forget about it. Get on with your life'," she replied.

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