It is a story of rape, as it unfortunately happens every day. But since one story never quite looks like another, has its own fundamentals, has its gray areas, deploys a complexity of its own, that staged by Yvan Attal in his new film, Human things, based on the novel whose title is taken from Karine Tuil (published in 2019 by Gallimard editions), inevitably becomes exceptional.
A young man from a good family, divorced parents – the father is a television star, the mother a feminist intellectual regularly invited to television and radio sets – himself a polytechnician, a math student at a renowned American university , goes out one evening with a young woman who is also the daughter of the professor of letters with whom her mother now shares her life.
This meeting, both prepared and hoped for by the parents, takes a nightmarish turn. The young girl lodged a rape complaint the next day, an accusation immediately denied by her partner of one evening, who understood absolutely nothing about what happened to her once placed in police custody and must now prepare to be tried. .
Tense context in France
Human thingss, Karine Tuil’s novel, was in the wake of the #metoo movement launched in the fall of 2017 and the Weinstein affair, at the very least conducive to free speech in cases of sexual violence. When Yvan Attal writes, with his co-scriptwriter Yaël Langmann, his adaptation, in theaters on 1er December, the context became more tense in France, with the Adèle Haenel affair.
“These cases can only be resolved in court, certainly not on the street or on social media. »Yvan Attal, director
In November 2019, the actress spoke to denounce acts of touching and sexual harassment, when she was between 12 and 15 years old, committed by the director Christophe Ruggia, with whom she had filmed Devils (2002). The actress then claimed to Mediapart not wanting to file a complaint against the person designated as his attacker, considering that justice is failing in the case which concerned him.
But, once the prosecution took the case, Adèle Haenel decided, after his hearing, to file a complaint. The filmmaker is today indicted for sexual assault on a 15-year-old minor by a person having authority over the victim, and placed under judicial control.
Reread a text by the Marquis de Sade
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