They promise to bring consent on a platter. In recent years, intimacy coordinators have been appearing on film and series shoots in France, at the request of producers, directors or even actors. Their role is to help choreograph nude scenes, sexual relations or sexual violence, ensuring that the limits set by the actors are taken into account. A small, quiet revolution while scandals of sexist and sexual violence do not spare the cinema industry.
It’s in the United States, on the set of the television series The Deuce, by David Simon and produced by HBO, that this profession has taken root. Released in 2017, it looks at the development of the pornographic industry in New York in the early 1970s. “An actress [Emily Meade] who had a lot of intimacy in asking his production to be accompanied on this work”, tells 20 minutes Monia Aït El Hadj, one of the first intimacy coordinators to launch in France three years ago. After The Deucethe #MeToo movement and the Weinstein affair in the United States have contributed to accelerating the development of this profession.
“Young people don’t understand why my job didn’t exist before”
In France, these new professionals are intermittent in the entertainment industry and although they are still few in number, they could have a great future. “Actors from previous generations worked without it, so we have to prove to them the usefulness of the profession,” says Monia Aït El Had, lucidly. And the younger generations, it’s not that they don’t want to be intimate, but they want a professional framework that allows them to work on them upstream. They often don’t understand why my job didn’t exist before. »
Previously, intimate scenes were handled differently from one director to another but were often left to improvisation. “It’s complicated to say ‘no, I don’t want to do that, to get naked, etc.’ in front of your director, points out Monia Aït El Had. A third party comes to make things easier and provide solutions, in a collaborative process. » When called upon, Monia Aït El Had meets individually with the actors well in advance of filming, and discusses with them what the director has imagined and their expectations. Precautions which do not prevent a certain dose of improvisation, but within a predefined framework. “Our role is to find the common choreography, there is no question of one taking over the other,” underlines the intimacy coordinator.
Actress Laure Calamy, 48, says that before filming the film Inseparable, by Anne-Sophie Bailly, which will be released in 2024, took place “a meeting on zoom with a coordinator” to discuss the sex scenes that she had to shoot with the Belgian actor Geert Van Rampelberg. “It was necessary to do it beforehand, which allowed us to be comfortable on set,” points out the actress who, working in trust with the director, did not feel the need for the coordinator to be by her side on the big day. She did not use a coordinator on her film Iris and men, by Caroline Vignal, which comes out on January 4. “But I think it’s a good initiative, especially for less experienced actresses and actors,” concludes Laure Calamy.
“We’re not coming to save the poor actress from a bad director”
It’s not just actresses who seek the services of intimacy coordinators. “We are not coming to save the poor actress from a bad director, that is not the point at all,” clarifies Monia Aït El Hadj. I meet a lot of actors who have limits, discomfort and who need to work on intimate scenes.”
To accompany them, there are “intimacy clothing”, that is to say devices which allow certain parts of the body to be hidden or help to give the illusion of simulated sexuality. If they could previously be made piecemeal, depending on the sensitivity and availability of the costume department, brands are starting to offer them. And, intimacy coordinators are also responsible for creating tailor-made ones.
“We are creating a culture of consent on a production scale and we are opening a space where each artist can express their limits,” summarizes the coordinator, who compares her role to that of the coordinator of stunts who resolve falls and fights, in before filming. On scenes of sexual violence, stunt and intimacy coordinators work together. “There, it has to be even more choreographed, because you can get hurt even more,” she points out.
If these are only the beginnings of this new support for artists, she hopes “that it will become automatic in the coming years. »