In an interview published in the latest issue of the magazine Societyactress Catherine Deneuve defended half-word her longtime friend Gérard Depardieu, accused by 13 women of sexual violence and indicted for acts of rape and sexual assault on actress Charlotte Arnould.
First, Catherine Deneuve was asked about feminism, which she finds “very touching, very delicate” before adding: “God knows that I am a feminist, but I find it very shocking that when a man has had a problem in a relationship with a woman who claims to have suffered inappropriate behavior, we immediately speak of “rape”.
Asked by the magazine’s journalists about these “men who were once called ”big insistent flirts”” who would be presented “today as ”sexual predators””, the French cinema icon regretted that “names are immediately, after a complaint, associated with the word ‘rape’ in the press, I find that shocking – whether it is Gérard Depardieu, whom I love very much, or another. »
“I am not minimizing or denying”
“I am not minimizing or denying that it exists, obviously I support absolutely all the victims, defends Catherine Deneuve. But I note that before, there was a certain rigor with this kind of information, whereas now, it falls in continuous flow in the telephones. »
In memory, Catherine Deneuve had distinguished herself in 2018 by signing a column against the “denial campaigns” and “purifying wave” in the midst of the MeToo movement following the Weinstein affair: “Rape is a crime. But insistent or clumsy flirting is not a crime, nor is gallantry a macho aggression. “A fever to send ‘pigs’ to the slaughterhouse, which far from helping women to empower themselves, actually serves the interests of the enemies of sexual freedom, religious extremists, the worst reactionaries”, could- we read at the time in the gallery.