Monday March 1, 2021 at 8:50 p.m., France 5 show the movie Die from love, produced by André Cayatte exactly fifty years ago. With nearly 6 million admissions, the feature film embodied by Annie Girardot remains one of the great successes of French cinema. But what is the true story that inspired the fiction unveiled on our screens in 1971, as well as the eponymous song by Charles Aznavour, released that same year? This is one of the most high-profile news items of the time: the Gabrielle Russier affair. In 1968, this 30-year-old professor of letters from Marseille – renamed Danièle Guénot in the film – began a romantic affair with one of her pupils, then aged 16. Christian Rossi, a high school student in the second class played by Bruno Pradal, was renamed Gérard Leguen.
The story of Gabrielle Russier, a teacher in love with one of her students
The parents of Christian Rossi, teachers at the University of Aix-en-Provence, quickly object to this relationship and try to prevent their son from seeing his teacher. But the young teenager doesn't see it that way, and decides to let love triumph. After traveling across Europe with his beloved, Christian Rossi moves in with Gabrielle Russier. But in September 1968, Marguerite and Mario Rossi seized a judge for children, who decided to place the high school student in a boarding school in Argelès-Gazost. After a suicide attempt, Christian Rossi runs away and joins his teacher. In November, his parents end up filing a complaint for embezzlement of a minor and kidnapping.
Gabrielle Russier was imprisoned in December in the Baumettes prison, where she stayed only five days. Indeed, her lover succeeded in obtaining success with the juvenile judge. Interned in a psychiatric clinic, Christian Rossi ran away again in April 1969. The teacher was then sentenced to fifty days in prison for refusing to reveal the young man's whereabouts. His trial was finally held three months later, in July 1969. Gabrielle Russier is sentenced to 12 months suspended prison sentence, as well as a 1,500 francs fine and a symbolic franc in damages for the parents. A month before his appeal trial, and after a first attempt in August, the professor committed suicide on September 1, 1969 by becoming intoxicated with gas in his apartment in Marseille.
“Gabrielle Russier was not a predator "
Half a century later, when consent is at the heart of public debate, this story rings out quite differently. Some speak of impossible love, while others see it as an abusive relationship between a teenager and a woman with authority over him. For Pascale Robert-Diard, “Gabrielle Russier was not a predator”. In the columns of the magazine SHE, on newsstands on February 26, 2021, the co-author of Understand who will want – title taken from the reaction of President Georges Pompidou, to find in our video above – explains: “It has become, on its own, the symbol of the horrors ’of May 68 … Today, we are rediscovering it in a different context, one where we put 1968 on trial and the excesses of sexual liberation. "
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