In the 1980s, when she made her acting debut, Juliette Binoche was still only a teenager. A young woman already marked by trauma, that ofsexually assaulted as a child. “I had some signs of distrust, the first time being touched by a school teacher at 7 years old who taught me to read by caressing my penis behind his desk in front of the class.says the actress, now 60 years old, in a long three-page interview published in the newspaper ReleaseSaturday April 27, 2024. Despite this, and armed with this vigilance, the desire to make a name for herself in cinema is stronger than anything, and pushes her to accept everything from the directors and great actors she idolizes.
In the 80s and 90s, Juliette Binoche remembers that he “There wasn’t a script without a nude scene”, not a casting, not a shoot or even a film poster, where she was not asked to undress. “Every time it was difficult.” And so it started very young: “While in high school, I had the opportunity to have coffee with Dominique Besnehard who offered to come to his office to bring a naked photo of me, a detail which had embarrassed me, in the event of being taken in Deadly Hike by Claude Miller in the early 80s”, says the actress, who was ultimately not selected for this film. But beyond the nudity scenes, which often put her “very uncomfortable”Juliette Binoche above all lived sexual assaults and attempted assaults.
“He throws himself at me to kiss me”, “a hand suddenly touches my genitals”, “he enters my caravan to grope me”… Juliette Binoche denounces several directors
The first one she remembers was in 1983, for her very first film role, in Liberty Belle by Pascal Kané. At the time, the director invited him “to dine at the Nikko hotel in the heights of a tower for [lui] talk, he assured, about another project”. “As he points out the view of the Seine front, he throws himself at me to kiss me. I pushed him away vigorously : ‘But I have a lover!’ I couldn’t believe it.” And when she recounts this episode in an interview a few years later, Pascal Kané demands that she “request a correction” claiming that the journalist had misunderstood her. “Besides, should we keep quiet?” Juliette Binoche also talks about other filmings, such as that of Appointmentin 1985. “A hand, while we were filming, suddenly came to touch my penis. No one had warned me, let alone asked for my consent. I was stunned. But I haven’t been able to say it. I never knew if this hand came from a request from the director [André Téchiné, ndlr.]or if it was the actor who took this liberty and I don’t really want to know.” In fact, this is a “gesture that[elle] would rather forget”.
Three years later, it was on the set of The Unbearable Lightness of Being that the American director Philip Kaufman “entered [sa] caravan for [la] grope”. If he doesn’t havenot insisted” when she pushed him away, Juliette Binoche later learned that her playing partner Lena Olin “had been entitled to the same attempts”. All these attacks became of the “injuries” which provoke in her “a rage, a revolt”, but which will never prevent her from pursuing this career for which she has given so much. From now on, she knows her limits, and no longer lets anyone cross them: “Today, I no longer need to be saved by this masculine image of the protective father or the lover who must be satisfied.”