Netflix is being sued for “Under the Grip,” a movie that suggests a freediver deliberately killed his wife in a diving accident.
Warning, spoilers. The following article reveals key plot elements of ‘Under the Grip’.
The French film Sous empprise, directed by David Rosenthal, is based on the true story of Francisco “Pipin” Ferreras and his wife, Audrey Mestre, a famous couple in the world of freediving, an extreme sport in which divers descend tens of meters without oxygen. In 2002, however, Audrey Mestre drowned while trying to break a record in the Dominican Republic: indeed, the bottle of compressed air, controlled only by Ferreras, used to inflate the balloon allowing it to rise to the surface was totally empty and it was then impossible for her to come to the surface quickly.
The film tells the story of “Pascal Gautier” and “Roxane Aubrey”, a fictionalized version of the couple. Gautier, played by Sofiane Zermani, is portrayed as abusive and jealous of the success of Aubrey, played by Camille Rowe, and strongly implies that he sabotaged her compressed air tank. Released on September 9, 2022, Under the Grip was for a few weeks the most popular non-English film on Netflix.
netflix
As reported by Variety, Francisco Ferreras officially filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday, alleging the film portrays him as a murderer. The feature also shows Gautier choking Aubrey during sex and the two characters fooling around, leading to a confrontation just before the fatal plunge.
“I don’t know how people can do something like this”, said Francisco Ferreras. “They manipulated history. They told it how they wanted. It really hurt me. As the movie unfolded, I started to hurt and hurt. Everything was very disturbing. Imagine – without knowing it – that you see a film that talks about your life and your story with your late wife and it surprises you.”
Since the release of the feature film, he says he has been bombarded with accusatory comments on social media and continues: “They staged Audrey as if she was cheating on me. He was an angel.”
“INSPIRED BY REAL EVENTS”?
If Under the influence is also said to be “based on real events” and includes a disclaimer stating that it is a “work of fiction” and that any resemblance to real people is coincidental, at the At the end of the film, however, a photo of Audrey Mestre is shown, along with a brief account of her death.
Writer-director David Rosenthal told Variety in an interview that the film was reviewed by lawyers before production and he doesn’t think Francisco Ferreras has a case against them.
“It is a fictionalization of stories that were very well known to the public – [cela va] documentaries to many articles and books about it“said David Rosenthal. “What I wrote is fiction, with fictional characters…I’m sure he’s trying to make money here suing Netflix.”
The couple’s story has indeed been told many times and in many ways over the past 20 years. An ESPN documentary was already critical of Ferreras and raised concerns about the safety standards in place at the time of the fatal dive. Ferreras’ former business partner Carlos Serra also wrote a book condemning Ferreras and holding him responsible for Audrey Mestre’s death.
A PROJECT WITH JAMES CAMERON
Francisco Ferreras has always maintained that his wife’s death was a tragic accident and relied on a report that attributed the malfunction to a series of technical factors. He also wrote his own book: moreover, at one point, there was talk of making a film of it and he was then working with James Cameron on the project in which we could have seen Jennifer Lawrence play Audrey Mestre. Francisco Ferreras would also seek to release his own documentary on the subject.
His attorney, Alexander Rufus-Isaacs, said in a statement that the creators of Under the Grip had engaged in “clear and despicable libel.”
“Filmmakers can’t make a movie about a real situation and just change some names and disguise it as fiction in order to escape liability for defamation. I am surprised that the defendants’ lawyers did not strongly advise them against doing so. I can see a jury awarding Pipin a very large amount of damages.”
Netflix declined to comment. The case is therefore to be followed.