Wednesday evening May 10, 2023, France 2 rebroadcast, in the first part of the evening, a French film on revenge porn: Mise à nu. We explain why you need to see it, and it’s here.
All concerned
Revenge porn has been making headlines for years, with amplification on social media. A lot of films and documentaries talk about it. But, all of them crash on a rock. They mainly target or address teenagers or very young adults. The very good point — and that’s why I watched it — of Mise à nu is that it’s about adults in their forties.
It is not at all here about people totally addicted to social networks, who constantly film themselves, photograph themselves everywhere or display their moods continuously. This is often what is blamed on people who complain of misdeeds on social networks “you just have to not be there”. Here, it is a divorced mother who starts a relationship with the bookseller installed opposite her restaurant. The other strong point is identification. In English, we speak of boy or girl next door.
The main actors could be your next door neighbors and that’s what gives the film a lot of accuracy. Besides, the guy—Vincent Marsac—doesn’t look “physically” dangerous. At first glance, he just looks slimy, like all desperate guys. But, at worst, we find him brave, like a Labrador, minus the adorable side. As for Sophie, she is also not a fatal beauty on which all men turn. She’s a perfectly ordinary woman.
The film opens with a “warning” “based on real events”. The reader should be warned: in fact, it is a film that is documented. American screenwriters do this regularly: they draw their inspiration from stories they find in the press and make films of them. Here it is a patchwork of events and stories, but the story itself is not real.
Social isolation
The plot: Sophie has an affair with Vincent. The latter turns out to be toxic — you will understand by watching the film — with the occurrence of weak signals. Sophie decides to break off the relationship. In revenge, Vincent installs spyware in his phone, publishes a video on his Facebook account (Sophie’s account) showing her having sex. The sequel goes crescendo.
At first, everyone turns their backs on Sophie. Her best friend, her parents, her children, her ex-husband, she is really alone. However, from the start, she has the right reflexes. Guy gets toxic, she breaks up. She discovers the videos, she goes to the police station and files a complaint. She almost has to fight with the policeman to do it. The most annoying is the testimony of the latter at the bar: he says that at the time, we did not know what revenge porn was. If the action of the film took place in 2010, we could have believed it. Except the action kicks off in 2020 and yes, in 2020 everyone knew what revenge porn was.
The disconnect between the situation and the judiciary is total and very well illustrated. Sophie’s complaints end up dismissed, the police officer’s hierarchy asks her to do something else. Only the association tries to help him, but we concede that it does it badly and we will explain to you why.
The association takes screenshots of the sites where Sophie’s videos have been uploaded, contacts the sites one by one and sends a message to request the deletion, attaching the identity document. Never do this. First of all, if ever such a thing happens to you, get a lawyer and follow the procedure that he will tell you. Yes, you can be helped, including financially. Contact the Conseil National des Barreaux. Screenshots, to be admissible in court, must be taken by bailiffs, according to a specific procedure. Finally, never send your ID. We will forgive the film for this big mistake, especially since it shows how revenge porn is a bottomless abyss.
Small inconsistencies
Criminal lawyers who watched the film did not comment on Twitter. Or else I missed it. Some passages seem inconsistent. Sophie is tried by an assize court and ends up being sentenced to five years in prison. Having executed two years in pre-trial detention, she comes out “free”. We will let the criminal lawyers say the law on this point, but that does not seem coherent.
Still on the legal level, during the trial, there is the arrival of a surprise witness, by videoconference then the testimony of Vincent’s new companion, who produces before the court, a USB key, with evidence. We also have the lawyer who installs spyware on the telephone of the opposing party’s lawyer in the middle of a hearing. These aren’t overly nasty inconsistencies, in the sense that they don’t take away from the main point, which is that revenge porn destroys lives.
On the computer part – we are still on ZDNet – there is one point that caught our attention. Vincent installed spyware on Sophie’s phone, to take control of her device. The phone in question is an Apple. We won’t go so far as to say that iPhones can’t be hacked, but you have to jailbreak them first to install spyware. In the film, Vincent manages to keep Sophie’s phone on for a few hours. The time window is believable, if Vincent has the unlock code for the phone. Again, this is still a mainstream movie and much to our regret, not everyone reads ZDNet on a daily basis to spot these kinds of inconsistencies.
We forgive the small inconsistencies noted here and there. Because Mise à nu is a good film. On the one hand, he reminds that anyone can be a victim of revenge porn, including people who are not teenagers. It also shows a certain benevolence or disdain for this subject by public decision-makers. In view of the damage caused – some scenes in the film are very harsh – the sentences seem quite light and the police do not have the means to work properly. Above all, this film is human. In absolute terms, all films are human, but the script shows that Sophie is really pushed to the limit and in a way, it’s good to see him on screen, in a different genre of films than the film of horror. Finally, if only because it gave rise to three pages of handwritten notes during the viewing, it is worth seeing.
Mise à nu is available in replay on France TV and we really recommend it.