Published by Grasset in 2020, Vanessa Springora’s book, entitled The consent, had the effect of a bomb in the French literary world. The one who held the position of director of Julliard editions returned to the controlling relationship she maintained with the famous author Gabriel Matzneff in the 1980s. Aged around fifty at the time, the writer was dating Vanessa Springora, when the latter was only 14 years old. It is precisely this abusive relationship, against a backdrop of child criminality, that the author of Consent wanted to denounce by writing this book. On Wednesday October 11, 2023, French spectators will have the opportunity to discover the eponymous film adaptation of this work in cinemas. It was the young actress Kim Higelin who was chosen to lend her features to the character of Vanessa Springora, during her adolescence. For his part, Jean-Paul Rouve inherited the role from Gabriel Matzneff. Interpreter of Jeff Tuche in the successful film franchise Tuche, the 56-year-old actor is absolutely unrecognizable in The consent.
Jean-Paul Rouve on Gabriel Matzneff: “He is absolute evil. He is a terrible monster”
Present on the set of C to you Monday October 9, 2023 on France 5Jean-Paul Rouve spoke about the difficulty he had in playing Gabriel Matzneff on the big screen. “I couldn’t embody it like a perfume from the inside. Like we do when we play. Well, we try. I did what you never do, I went through the outside, through the envelope. So, I did a bit like he does.”, underlined the Caesarized actor, before expressing his feelings about the author, targeted by an investigation for rape of a minor since the revelations of Vanessa Springora. “He adores himself. He only thinks about himself. He looks at himself all the time”. Subsequently, the actor explained how he finally got into the skin of his character, a former literary star who had fallen from grace. “He was swimming. I went swimming. I did UV. I did manicures. I did stuff like that”revealed Jean-Paul Rouve, before Anne-Elisabeth Lemoine specified that he had also lost ten kilos. “I tried to understand him like that, but I didn’t understand anything. I don’t know who he is. He’s absolute evil. He’s a terrible monster”, concluded the actor, for whom the filming of this film was not easy. In fact, the host of C to you indicated that his guest felt “covered in mud” when he returned home at the end of the filming days. Jean-Paul Rouve has never had a similar experience on any of his previous feature films.