Two weeks after Le Monde published an investigation into director Benoît Jacquot's abusive relationship with actress Judith Godrèche, who was 14 at the time, Godrèche spoke at the Césars film awards ceremony on Friday, February 23, to encourage people to speak out about sexual and gender-based violence in the French film industry. We are publishing her speech below.
It's hard to stand here in front of all of you tonight.
There are so many of you.
Yet, in the end, I suppose it had to happen.
Face to face with each other, looking into each other's eyes.
Many of you have seen me grow up.
It's impressive, it has an impact.
When it comes down to it, I've never known anything other than cinema.
So, to reassure myself, I invented a little lullaby along the way.
"My clasped arms, they're you, all the little girls in the silence,
My neck, my bent neck, it's you, all the children in silence,
My wobbly legs, they're you, the young men who couldn't defend themselves.
My trembling but also smiling mouth is you, my unknown sisters."
After all, I too am a crowd.
A crowd facing you.
A crowd that is looking you in the eye tonight.
It's a funny moment for all of us, isn't it?
A returnee from the Americas has come to kick in the armored door.
Who would have thought?
For some time now, voices have been unleashed, the idealized image of our fathers has been shattered, power almost seems to be in a state of turmoil, could it be possible for us to look at the truth in the eye?
To take on our responsibilities? To be actors, actresses of a world that is questioning itself?
For some time now, I've been talking and talking, but I can't hear you, or only a little. Where are you? What are you saying? A whisper. Half a word.
"That would be a start," says Little Red Riding Hood.
I know it's scary.
Losing grants.
Losing roles.
Losing your job.
Me too.
I'm scared too.
I quit school at 15, I don't have a high school diploma, nothing.
It would be complicated to be blacklisted from everything.
It wouldn't be fun.
Wandering the streets of Paris in my hamster suit.
Dreaming of myself as an icon of French cinema...
In my rebellion, I thought of the terms we use on set. Silence.
Roll camera.
For me, silence has been rolling for thirty years now.
Yet I can still imagine the incredible melody we could compose together.
Made of truth.
It wouldn't hurt that much. I promise.
Just a scratch on the carcass of our peculiar family.
It's really nothing compared to a punch in the nose.
To a child being assaulted like a city under siege by an all-powerful adult, under a crew's silent gaze.
To a director who, whispering, drags me onto his bed under the pretext of needing to understand who I really am.
Really nothing compared to 45 takes, with two disgusting hands on my 15-year-old breasts.
Cinema is made up of our desire for truth.
Films watch us as much as we watch them.
It's also made out of our need for humanity. No?
So, why?
Why allow this art that we love so much, this art that brings us together, to be used as a cover for the illicit trafficking of young girls?
Because you must know that this loneliness, it's mine but it's also that of thousands in our society.
It's in your hands.
We are in the spotlight.
At the dawn of a new day.
We can decide that men accused of rape should not be allowed to call the shots in cinema.
That, as they say, sets the tone.
We can't ignore the truth because it's not our child, our son, our daughter.
We can't be at such a level of impunity, denial and privilege that morality goes right over our heads.
We have to set an example.
We too.
Don't think I'm telling you about my past, my past which isn't in the past.
My past is also the present of the 2,000 people who sent me their testimonies in four days... It's also the future of all those who haven't yet had the strength to become their own witnesses.
You know, to believe in yourself, you have to be believed.
The world is watching us, we travel with our films, we're lucky to be in a country where it appears that freedom exists.
So, with the same moral strength that we use to create,
Let's have the courage to say out loud what we know deep down.
Let's not embody heroines on screen, only to find ourselves hiding in the woods in real life; let's not embody revolutionary or humanist heroes, only to wake up in the morning knowing that a director has abused a young actress, and say nothing.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to put on my cape tonight and intrude on you a little.
You have to watch out for little girls.
They hit the bottom of the pool, bump and hurt themselves, but bounce right back up.
Little girls are punks who come back disguised as hamsters.
And, to dream of a possible revolution,
They like to repeat this dialogue from Céline and Julie vont en bateau ["Celine and Julie Go Boating", a 1974 film by Jacques Rivette]:
Céline — "Once upon a time."
Julie — "Once upon two times. Once upon three times."
Céline — "Once upon this time, it won't be like that, like all the other times."
Judith