Cannes has finally turned its back on the disgraced Depardieu. Good
The festival opened on the same day that one of its heroes, Gérard Depardieu, was convicted of sexual assault.
Ah, Cannes. The sun streaming across La Croisette. The stars of Hollywood gathered on the red carpet. And the ever-present threat that the French film industry is finally about to undergo its own MeToo reckoning.
Last year was supposed to be the big one. The actress Judith Godreche arrived in town with a powerful short film called Moi Aussi (Me Too) following rumours that at least ten leading industry figures were about to be unceremoniously outed as abusers during the opening ceremony, bringing the entire sinister edifice tumbling down. But there was no outing. Moi Aussi fizzled, Godreche left, and everyone went crazy for a sassy film about a New York stripper who’s semi-naked for most of the movie - the eventual multiple Oscar winner Anora.
This year there are no planned feminist protests, and in the build-up to Tuesday’s opening day we heard nothing more political from the official festival machine than a pronouncement on inappropriate clothing on the red carpet. And yet the MeToo reckoning feels closer than ever. And that’s because Gerard Depardieu, the unofficial “King of Cannes”, has finally faced justice.
On the same day that the festival began, the man who was described by President Macron in 2024 as an “immense actor” and “the pride of France” has been found guilty of sexually assaulting two women, and faces a rape trial this year. “Today we see the end of impunity for an artist in the world of cinema,” said Carine Durrieu Diebolt, the lawyer representing one of Depardieu’s victims.
Depardieu is virtually synonymous with Cannes. The progression of the festival through the modern era can be traced in the French superstar’s appearances here. He’s the defining figure in so many iconic portraits of banner years. You will find pictures of him next to Catherine Deneuve in 1984 (he co-starred in that edition’s Fort Saganne) or beaming in 1987 as his movie Under the Sun of Satan wins the Palme d’Or. Or he’s triumphant again as a Cannes best actor winner in 1990 (for Cyrano de Bergerac) or cosying up to Tom Cruise in 1992 (Depardieu was jury president that year), or later still mingling with the Coppola family in 2001 (Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now Redux was playing).
By the 2010s, Depardieu’s hit rate had slowed to a death march, and he had become more famous for his off-screen antics - acquiring Russian citizenship after tax battles with the French government; urinating into a bottle on an Air France flight; crashing his scooter while being four times over the legal alcohol limit. And yet his seemingly inviolable status as France’s beloved “monstre sacre” (literally, sacred monster) insulated him against all credible criticism. When interviewed about Depardieu’s erratic behaviour and reputation, his compatriot Juliette Binoche seemed to speak for the French nation when she said: “You have to forgive ... Even though Gerard has had a huge career, there’s still a little boy inside. And we must all take care of our little ones.”
On screen, Depardieu’s work was plentiful but pitiful. In 2014 he starred as a debauched French politician in Abel Ferrara’s Welcome to New York, a drama inspired by the case of the disgraced economist and former International Monetary Fund boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn. In the same year he was widely ridiculed for playing Jules Rimet in United Passions, a bland, whitewashed, corporate epic about the origins of Fifa that was almost fully funded by Fifa and featured Tim Roth as Sepp Blatter. The film, regardless of quality, was still honoured with a prestige premiere slot in Cannes. Nothing but the best for the king.
The following year Depardieu created another Cannes media spectacle when, during a photocall for the dud competition entry Valley of Love, he leant in for an impromptu kiss with his co-star Isabelle Huppert who, seemingly horrified, flinched. She then smiled, offered her cheek and, back to business, the monstre sacre was once more appeased.
Across the French film industry this same shoulder-shrugging mood greeted the emerging MeToo movement. Depardieu’s frequent co-star Deneuve was just one of 100 French female artists who signed an open letter to Le Monde in 2018 that pushed back against the core values of MeToo, claiming that “the liberty to seduce and importune is essential to sexual freedom”.
Even after Depardieu was charged with rape in 2020, there was another open letter, Don’t Erase Gerard Depardieu, this time sent to Le Figaro, denouncing the “lynching” of the actor. The signatories included Carla Bruni, Charlotte Rampling and several respected industry figures and Cannes veterans, including the film-maker Bertrand Blier, who directed Depardieu in his first hit, Les Valseuses.
And now, after his conviction, what next for Cannes? What next for the festival’s relationship with Depardieu? “I think that with this decision we can no longer say that he is not a sexual abuser,” said Durrieu Diebolt. “And today, as the Cannes Film Festival opens, I’d like the film world to spare a thought for Gerard Depardieu’s victims.”
Binoche, like Depardieu in 1992, is here in Cannes as president of the competition jury. And so almost on her arrival in town, at the jury press conference she was asked about her thoughts on the newly announced Depardieu conviction. The first question was couched in vague MeToo terminology and so she answered it vaguely too, saying that “great changes” were occurring in the world outside and within the MeToo movement, and that Cannes was representing those changes.
Later, though, she returned to Depardieu and addressed the man, and the subject, by name. Specifically, she wanted to acknowledge that Depardieu would no longer be regarded, indulgently, as a monstre sacre. “For me, what is sacred is when something happens, when you create, when you act, when you are on stage,” she said. “And now, he is no longer sacred.”
The implications of the verdict, she said, should have wider reverberations. “That means you need to think hard about the power wielded by certain people who take that power. And the power may lie elsewhere.”
It wasn’t quite a rallying cry for the ages, but neither was it an appeal to care for the “little boy” at the core of Depardieu’s being. It was, in fact, as close to a bombshell moment as you’re going to get out here, and it certainly felt that with the King of Cannes dethroned, the path might finally be clear for a true MeToo reckoning.
The Times
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