“Consent”, adapted from the book by Vanessa Springora, was released in theaters this week. For the occasion, here are five things to know about this shocking film starring Jean-Paul Rouve and Kim Higelin.
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What is it about ? Paris, 1985. Vanessa is thirteen years old when she meets Gabriel Matzneff, a renowned fifty-year-old writer. The young teenager becomes the lover and muse of this man celebrated by the cultural and political world. Losing herself in the relationship, she suffers more and more violently the destructive influence that this predator exercises over her.
Adapted from an autobiographical story
Consent is adapted from the book of the same name by Vanessa Springora, published for the first time in January 2020. This autobiographical story, which recounts the control and sexual abuse of which she was victim by the novelist Gabriel Matzneff since their meeting at his 13 years old, made a big splash when it was released.
Above all, this chilling testimony reveals the pedophile practices of a well-respected writer in the profession, which he carries out not only with complete impunity, but also by claiming responsibility for them (for example in his book Under sixteenspublished in 1974, or in the show Apostrophes in 1990, presented by Bernard Pivot).
Matzneff is immediately the target of an investigation for rape of a minor under the age of fifteen. In 2021, former journalist Francesca Gee says she also had a relationship with him when she was 15 years old. In 2022, he was interviewed by police officers from the Central Office for the Suppression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP).
But the Matzneff affair does not benefit from any legal action because the facts denounced are time-barred. Following Vanessa Springora’s accusations, the 87-year-old writer’s publishers have given up marketing her works. According to Franceinfo, the OCRVP is currently hearing “potential victims and witnesses”…
Julie Trannoy Jean-Paul Rouve and Kim Higelin
Preparation for Jean-Paul Rouve
To play Gabriel Matzneff, Jean-Paul Rouve lost ten kilos and did a lot of swimming: “I had to understand his routine. Swimming is a sport that allows you to think. I wondered what was occupying his mind when he did his laps. I observed where mine went when I swam. I took care of myself, which I don’t usually do to this extent: like him, I had manicures, I did UV treatments to get his complexion, I put on face cream morning and evening during all the preparation, which led me to look in the mirror, which he probably did too.”
“All this put me in good condition during my three months of preparation. I also worked a lot on the script in order to let the character come to me. But the difficulty with Matzneff is that, unlike other characters, with him I found no point of support, no common area with me. I’m not saying that from a moral point of view; I’m talking about his way of being physically, of expressing himself, of thinking ; in his relationship to life, to creation, I saw no branch to cling to. This role therefore implied on my part a total construction, a work unprecedented for me until then.”
“Matzneff is quite precious. He stands very straight, which is accentuated by his military or safari jackets. I told myself that he was aware of having beautiful hands and that he used them to seduce his audience. I So I put some hand cream on my hands and worked on my gestures like a magician.”
Is Consent with Jean-Paul Rouve a good film? Here’s what the first viewers think of the adaptation of the shocking book
Birth of the project
After Gueule d’ange, producers Carole Lambert and Marc Missonnier and director Vanessa Filho wanted to continue working together. It was Marc who called the latter telling her that they needed to meet to talk about Vanessa Springora’s book: “They had read it and had the immediate instinct that it would resonate with me. They were convinced of it and were not mistaken, and I will always be infinitely grateful to them… Because that very evening I read it and the evidence struck me. This film then became our priority. And for three years, they have been carrying it with courage and determination.”
“My first reading was an emotional and intimate shock, a real encounter. When I finished reading this book, I felt a very strong feeling of helplessness and anger, and everything that I could not bear in this story gave birth to powerful emotions. It was these emotions that pushed me to act. And to act, for me, was to make a film. The film appeared to me, as I read, to be made of sensations, emotions and looks… revealing the intimate in the language of the body. It was immediately incarnated. The images generated by the author’s story were associated with nightmares.”
“They imposed themselves on my imagination, and have not left me. If images haunt me like this, they create in me a need to be staged.”
Who to play Vanessa?
For the role of Vanessa, Vanessa Filho wanted to find a new face in the cinema and wanted this actress to be over 16 years old: “It was obviously out of the question to endanger a teenager of Vanessa’s age in the adapted story, to create confusion too, to reproduce the trauma on a young actress. Kim Higelin was 20 years old at the time of the casting, which allowed me to have a real dialogue with her on the subject.”
“At the tests, I immediately knew that she was the role. She was unique, of absolute depth, extremely sensitive and brilliant, and then… This voice… A cinema voice. She read the book and the script, and instantly understood all the psychological and complex stages that her character went through. She impressed me from the beginning to the end of the project…”
Consent: this psychopath from a cult film that inspired Jean-Paul Rouve to play Gabriel Matzneff
A faithful adaptation
The work of writing the script was carried out in an extremely free manner. But being faithful to Vanessa Springora’s story was a real choice on Vanessa Filho’s part. The filmmaker remembers: “I had been so shocked by the public rape that Vanessa had suffered, and by the fact that she had become, despite herself, an unwilling object of literature, that for me it was out of the question to transform her once again into fictional character. It is therefore his story that I unfolded on the screen, and no other.”
“The adaptation is not about a novel but about a “story” whose author fights precisely not to be a fictional character. I have, of course, as in any adaptation of a book to the cinema, fictionalized things, developed, added personal elements, from my intimate obsessions, from my own wounds too… But I made sure to never deviate from the truth of the characters. Vanessa read several versions of the script. We had intense exchanges, which nourished and made the scenario grow.”