Gerard Depardieu trial to test French tolerance of sexual violence

Gerard Depardieu will stand trial on Tuesday for sexually assaulting two women in the first big legal reckoning in France’s version of the MeToo movement.

Gerard Depardieu at the Brussels International Film Festival in 2016. Picture: AFP.

Gerard Depardieu will stand trial on Monday local time for sexually assaulting two women in the first big legal reckoning in France’s version of the MeToo movement.

The 75-year-old actor, a giant of French cinema, is accused of groping, grabbing and harassing the women on the set of Jean Becker’s Les Volets Verts (The Green Shutters) in Paris in 2021.

The trial, which comes five years after an actress first accused Depardieu of rape, is seen as a test of a supposed shift away from France’s tolerance of toxic male behaviour in the entertainment world. “This case will also be a trial of French cinema because it involves the scenes of sexual assault that are apparently ordinary on film sets” the news magazine Marianne said.

In an echo of the prosecution in 2017 of Harvey Weinstein, the American producer, 21 women have made claims of assault against Depardieu. Six investigations have been opened and an examining judge will rule shortly on whether to try him for raping Charlotte Arnould, an actress. The Paris prosecutor requested the indictment in August after investigating her claim that Depardieu raped and sexually assaulted her in his Paris home in 2018 when she was 22. He claims that she consented.

Depardieu, who has been defended by President Macron and some eminent women in the film industry, denies all the allegations and claims that he is the victim of malice.

“Never, but never, have I abused a woman,” he wrote in an open letter published by Le Figaro last October. His accusers in the trial say there was an atmosphere of crude and insulting behaviour on the Green Shutters set. One, a 53-year-old set designer named Amelie, has said the actor boasted about his penis and claimed that he could “give women an orgasm without touching them”. He “brutally grabbed” her and pinned her with his legs before groping, she told the Mediapart website.

A 33-year-old assistant director reported Depardieu to police for assaulting her and Anouk Grinberg, an actress in the film, said Depardieu had used “salacious words … from morning till night” on the set. “When producers hired Depardieu, they knew they were hiring an assaulter,” she added.

Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, Amelie’s lawyer, said: “I expect the justice system to be the same for everybody and for Monsieur Depardieu not to receive special treatment.”

Jeremy Assous, Depardieu’s lawyer, said his team would call “witnesses and evidence that will show he has simply been targeted by false accusations”. The women’s demands for damages showed they were attempting to make money from their claims, the lawyer said.

The case opens during the marathon trial in Avignon, of the alleged associates of Dominique Pelicot, 71, who has admitted inviting dozens of men to rape his wife in their home after he had drugged her. The trial and the ordeal of Gisele Pelicot, 72, who waived her anonymity and has attended every day, has shocked France into examining a failure to confront sexual violence. While no one is defending Pelicot’s actions, Depardieu’s legal showdown has led sympathisers to say he has been demonised for his “excesses”.

Carole Bouquet, the film actress who was his partner, said he was “incapable of hurting a woman”. She was among 60 celebrities who say he is being “lynched”.

If convicted, Depardieu, star of The Last Metro and Cyrano de Bergerac, among dozens of films, could face five years in jail.

The Times