Director Philippe Garrel is accused of sexual violence by several actresses

By several actresses, including Clotilde Hesme and Anna Mouglalis.

Director Philippe Garrel, 75, is the target of several accusations of sexual violence. Winner of the Silver Bear at the start of the year for The Big Cart, during his career he would have asked sexual favors from actresses in exchange for roles in one of his films. Asked by Mediapartwhich details a handful of cases, he acknowledges the facts, but asserts that these women have “misinterpreted” his gestures. He adds that he is in full “questioning” since these accusations.

“In This investigation, five women accuse him of sexual propositions in a professional context, four of whom mention non-consensual gestures and kisses, likely to be qualified as sexual assault or attempted sexual assault.writing Mediapartwho cites four of them by name: Anna Mouglalis, Clotilde Hesme, Laurence Cordier And Marie Vialle.

Louis Garrel, Anna Mouglalis, Esther Garrel, Philippe Garrel and Jean-Louis Aubert at the premiere of La Jalousie, at the 2013 Venice Film Festival.

Anna Mouglalis starred in Jealousyby Phillipe Garrel, in 2013. She assures that on this shoot, “There was nothing inappropriate”. He then wanted to shoot a new film with her on female desire. She invited him to her house to talk about it, but during the discussion he lay down on her bed, which she interpreted as an invitation to have sex with him. She then called a taxi to take him home.

“It was the climate of trust during the shoot that made me invite him into my home as an almost fatherly figure, given the 30-year age difference.”she says about this evening which dates precisely to February 18, 2014. “He was lying on my bed. He pretended that he needed it for his pain, she continues. It’s so huge even though there were two sofas right next to it in the living room! I said it was out of the question (to continue reading). Then if he was tired, he left.” She adds, regarding his behavior “insulting” : “We are in the middle of a caricature of basic misogyny and machismo.”

About this evening, Phillipe Garrel tells his version of the facts: “She invited me over for dinner. We were in the kitchen, and I felt unwell. I told her I needed to lie down, to which she replied: ‘Ah good ? You think ?’ And I told him again that I really didn’t feel well and that I needed to lie down. So I went to his bed and lay down for twenty minutes, before going home.” He adds that for him “it was not a professional meeting” and that he did not have “no ambivalent gesture towards him.”

Philippe Garrel reunites his children in The Grand Chariot (trailer)

Clotilde Hesme was one of Philippe Garrel’s students at the Paris Conservatory. She has already told in The Expressin 2015, that the filmmaker“humiliated” during the filming of Regular lovers, released ten years earlier. Today she tells Mediapartwhich he nicknamed her “Incest, like the love story told in this film, was between his son and me”. She says she is still “stunned” by this behavior, but Garrel does not see any aggression in it: “To tell the truth, I don’t understand much about this assertion”he replied to the newspaper.

Laurence Cordier has also already recounted her misadventure with Phillipe Garrel to Inrocks, in 2017. But it was anonymous. She then spoke of‘”a major director of French cinema” who would have invited her to a meeting to talk about a role before suggesting that they continue their discussion at the hotel. “It was horrible, she says now. I felt humiliated. I was so ashamed to have imagined that it was for my talent that he wanted to see me. I had the feeling that I had been fooled, he called me to talk to me about work, he was a valued filmmaker, whom I admired, recognized by my school, a powerful man. And I found myself, instead of accepting a role, rejecting it.”

“If Laurence Cordier felt humiliated, I am sorry, Garrel reacted. On the other hand, I would like to emphasize that I have never given false professional hopes to an actress with a view to seducing her.”

Gérard Depardieu: 13 women testify to sexual violence against the actor in Mediapart

Marie Vialle was a student at the Conservatory from 1994 to 1997, between the ages of 20 and 23. She says that Philippe Garrel had told her of his desire to write a film for her, but that during one of their professional meetings, he tried to kiss her.

“‘I can’t make the film if I don’t sleep with you’he would have told her according to the story she gave us orally and in writing, continues Mediapart. Then he would have added that he was ‘lover’ of her. She reports having ‘took the time to explain’ that he could ‘to be in love with her, to desire her’but she didn’t want ‘sleep with him’. He would have insisted on the fact that he needed to know her for his film ‘for real’, that he couldn’tdoing otherwise’. She then gave up making the film, she says.

Disgusted by this experience, she did not manage to talk about it with Marcel Bozonnet, the director of the Conservatory at the time, before 2022. When she did, he was “fallen from the clouds”. “It was while talking with Marcel that I understood that it was shame and not fear that made me keep silent, she continues. I was ashamed of having made myself pretty and believing in it. I blamed myself, even though it was him who was blackmailing me. Twenty-eight years later, testifying made me understand that I had been ashamed.”

About him, Philippe Garrel acknowledges being “fell in love with her” : “I remember explaining to him that, like many new wave directors, I liked to shoot with the woman I was in love with and film her. I may have tried to kiss her, but I didn’t I don’t remember, but she most certainly rejected me since it was precisely at that lunch that I understood that she was not at all attracted to me. Today, I understand that she could have live like blackmail but my feelings for her being real, I did not realize it. (…) If I hurt Marie Vialle, for whom I have a lot of respect, I am sorry.”

Also sharing two other anonymous testimonies, the article by Mediapart concludes with “awareness” from the director… followed by a request to Anna Mouglalis to withdraw her comments. “Reading all these testimonies, I realize the difference between what I imagined then and what I made them experiencehe wrote to the newspaper. I had already become aware of the culture that shaped me, and this opened up a questioning in me.”

In the following paragraph, the actress regrets that he called her for him “request to withdraw his testimony in the name of their friendship. “It is once again this great mixture, this creation of confusion, between private and professional, she considers. I’ve never seen Philippe Garrel outside of work, but he calls it friendship. And then, he didn’t call me to find out what motivated my testimony, just to ask me to remove it. All this at a time when Polanski, Allen and Besson are invited to the Venice festival…”

Via his lawyer, Philippe Garrel responds that he did not want to put pressure on him, but that he only wanted “discuss the accusations she made against him. He ended up telling her that she had to do what her conscience told her. My client tells me that he did not exert any pressure on this actress, and that his approach cannot be interpreted as such.”concludes the article.