In the 80s, Juliette Binoche tried to find a place in cinema. Accustomed to the theater, she discovered a whole new environment. In the columns of Release, this Saturday, April 27, the 60-year-old actress talks about the attacks, as well as the hypersexualization of her body that she experienced during filming in her early days. From his first film, Liberty Belle, a harsh reality imposes itself on her. “As Pascal Kané points out the view, he throws himself at me to kiss me. I pushed him away vigorously. (…) I couldn’t believe it”, she remembers. A few years later, while filming his first film abroad, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, she explains having pushed away the director who came to grope her in her trailer. Juliette Binoche also remembers Jean-Luc Godard’s instructions during a casting. “Undressing, walking around a table naked reading a poem while combing my hair while he films”, she confides. “He was often asked to undress for a casting. I executed”, she specifies.
But there was one time too many. “Under the gaze of Sébastien Japrisot, crowned by the success of The Deadly Summer that he had written, we had to play the same scenes over and over again in underwear and garters. I walked out right in the middle of this angry casting”, she explains. Nude scenes were always a moment she dreaded. On the set of the film Appointmentshe remembers “difficult scenes”, in particular “spit on, mime blowjob and pretend to have sex on stairs.” The actress also denounces a “commodification” of her body through film posters on which she appears “totally naked”. She also describes having witnessed, with fear, filming scenes in which other actresses were being attacked. “I understood in hindsight, it was barely perceptible, that an extra was being raped by an actor in Children of the century during an opium scene in a brothel, she remembers. I had hatred.”
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“All these injuries cause rage”
Despite the violence and situations she suffered, Juliette Binoche did not have “no desire to stop”. “All these wounds cause rage, revolt”, she assures. Before continuing: “Low blows, inappropriate gestures, sexist remarks: I don’t forget them, they poison life, but they remain secondary”. The actress seems to have managed to recover from these violent scenes. “Ultimately, all is forgiven. Everything is transformed, everything has sculpted me”, she emphasizes. Juliette Binoche also wanted to thank the women and men who have the courage to testify about what they have suffered in the world of cinema. “I am relieved to see andhear women’s testimonies and men who dare to expose the abuses they sufferedshe says. It’s not easy to expose your private life, and we should all thank them.”
Photo credits: COADIC GUIREC / BESTIMAGE