On February 28, 2020, actress Adèle Haenel left the Césars ceremony at the announcement of the coronation of Roman Polanski, named best director for his film I accuse. ” Shame “she pronounced to the attention of the Franco-Polish filmmaker, accused of rape by a dozen women, a long soap opera which began in the early 1970s. A few months earlier, in November 2019, Adèle Haenel had created amazement in unveiling in Mediapart, the touching that she would have suffered, as a teenager, from the filmmaker Christophe Ruggia. The latter was indicted for “sexual assault on a 15-year-old minor by a person having authority over the victim” in January 2020. This testimony also aimed to release the words of anonymous women, in France, two years after the Harvey affair. Weinstein, named after the American producer accused, in October 2017, of sexual assault, harassment and rape.
If Adèle Haenel has since moved away from film sets, to reappear in the theater, her words sounded like an explosion, while the National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image had no other choice but to work in favor of parity and against sexual and gender-based violence − let us add that its president, Dominique Boutonnat, was himself accused of sexual assault by his godson, in October 2020. He was reappointed, in July 2021, but will be tried in correctional for “sexual assault”.
This blurred landscape − on September 29, French Film extolled the merits of French cinema with the title “Objective reconquest”, on 100% male coverage − was all the same accompanied by an increasingly visible paradigm shift on screens. A large number of films, often directed by women, have undertaken with varying degrees of success to rewrite female roles, bringing out a new generation of intrepid people, contrary to the caricatures of fragile princesses, neglected housewives and lovers stuck in a patriarchal vision of society.
Reversal of stereotypes
Palme d’or in 2021, Titaniumby Julia Ducournau, can immediately be read as a feminization of the word “titan”. From its heroine (Agathe Rousselle), presented half-naked in a lascivious dance on the bonnet of a car, the film gradually discovers the more visceral, blurred and androgynous contours of her femininity. This material is here invested in favor of a dark tale of emancipation, enamelled with gore, bruises, acts of mutilation and disfigurement, alongside a firefighter (Vincent Lindon) who suffers, as for him, from the injunction to virility made to the alpha male.
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