It’s time for reckoning for Roselyne Bachelot. In a review book titled 682 days, she looks back on those years at the Ministry of Culture, crossed by the health crisis. And she takes the opportunity to hit hard by denouncing “arrogant snobbery”, “clientelist fortresses” or even “well-meaning”. In this book published by Plon, the predecessor of Rima Abdul-Malak returns in particular to the massive aid granted to the cultural sector during confinements and other restrictions and to the policies that she was able to carry out from July 2020 to May 2022.
The minister is particularly angry with certain artists, “the wealthiest”, believing that they have shown ingratitude by criticizing the action of the State, while the sector, at a standstill, was kept under financial infusion . Among these: the “sourness” and the “resentment” of the singer Clara Luciani, who had joked about the alleged “holidays” of Roselyne Bachelot in August 2020, or the “disparaging remarks” of the singer-songwriter Benjamin Biolay, while he is not one of the “most to complain about the system”. “You put me on dry bread! “, he will launch it publicly. “His toast in any case was well buttered and on both sides”, replies today the ex-minister.
“Throughout this crisis, I remained stunned by the double talk of this environment. When we went to greet the artists in their dressing room, the testimonials of gratitude were constant. On the other hand, on television and on the radio, the aggressiveness and the victimization were deployed, ”she summarizes today.
French cinema in the sights of Bachelot
The sharpest attacks are addressed to French cinema, after an evening of the Césars 2021 where inappropriate humor, inter-self and recriminations of the artists created unease. “We could expect from the world of cinema, stuffed with public money, in the absence of recognition – let’s not ask for the impossible! – at least a short and courteous greeting to the representative of the State during this demonstration. (…) The famous “cultural exception” indeed allows very many French films to “not find their audience”, as we say modestly, or, more explicitly, to be flop”, attacks Roselyne Bachelot.
“The system also allows actors who are at the head of the casting to receive staggering fees three or four times higher than those of actors in American independent cinema films,” she adds. “Direct subsidies, advances on receipts, tax exemptions, intermittence have created an assisted economy which not only does not worry about the tastes of the spectators but professes a contempt displayed for the films “mainstream” and profitable. Giving a César to Dany Boon and his more than 20 million admissions for Welcome to the Ch’tis, ugh! “, she quips.