“I don’t do cinema anymore,” said French actress Adèle Haenel (“Portrait of a Young Woman on Fire”) in an interview with Wiener Magazin FAQ said. Haenel is currently making a guest appearance at the Vienna Festival with a play in which she plays the leading role. She just decided, “for political reasons”, because the film industry is “absolutely reactionary, racist and patriarchal”. If she stayed, she says, “I would become a kind of feminist guarantor for this male and patriarchal industry.” The hardness of her decision may come as a surprise, Haenel is a star in France. But it’s not that surprising that she’s the one who gets out of here so furiously.
The 33-year-old was one of the leading figures of the French “Me Too” movement, which had long passed the film industry with little consequence. At the end of 2019 she accused director Christophe Ruggia of sexually molesting her as a child for over three years. At twelve she had played the leading role in his film “Little Devils”. Ruggia denies the allegations, but many witnesses support them.
At the “César” awards, she got up, protested loudly and left
Then came the presentation of the French film awards, the “Césars” in early 2020. Adèle Haenel was nominated for her leading role in Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Young Woman on Fire”. And Roman Polanski, convicted of having sex with a minor and repeatedly accused of rape, won, in absentia, the award for best director (“Intrigue”). Haenel got up, left and shouted “That’s a shame!”. Her departure caused a sensation, not only in France. And it was not without consequences: the producer of the film Roman Polanski is currently working on has now complained that that he received no funding from France and I’m afraid that the film might not even be able to reach the cinemas there.
Nevertheless: Adèle Haenel thinks so, she says in an interview FAQ, that in her case “leaving means struggling. By leaving this industry for good, I want to be part of another world, another cinema.” The frustrating work on a film project by director Bruno Dumont brought her to her decision. The script was full of jokes about “cancel culture” and sexual violence. Dumont did not respond to her criticism. Most films are not inadvertently inconsiderate towards victims, says Haenel: “That’s on purpose.”
However, Adèle Haenel is not entirely lost to art. She will continue to play theater, she says. There, the financial stakes are not as high and the power structures are therefore not quite as solid as in the cinema. And maybe you will still be able to see her on the screen from time to time: she will continue to take part in projects by women like Celine Sciamma or activist directors.