“Why did you let me go with a 40 year old man?” » This crucial question, Judith Godrèche asks her fictional mother in one of the episodes by Icon of French Cinemaavailable this Thursday on Arte.tv. A series of six short thirty-minute episodes, written and directed by the actress and inspired by her life. An offbeat autofiction, funny and full of self-deprecation, in which the director delights in mishandling her character, making fun of her status as an actress and this evaporated and somewhat cutesy image of an intellectual that sticks to her.
But it is also the story of a flouted adolescence and wounds from the past. A personal story that Judith Godrèche confronts through fiction: that of her beginnings and her relationship with a director 25 years her senior. With this question, therefore, which hovers like a shadow over the series: how could a 14-year-old girl become the lover of a 40-year-old man, without at the time raise neither his family nor the small world of cinema in the 1980s?
A doll wandering into an adult world
Icon of French Cinema begins with the return of this “icon of French cinema” to Paris. After ten years of exile in Los Angeles with her two children, the actress made her comeback in France where she landed the main role in a film. Excited by this new beginning, Judith Godrèche quickly becomes disillusioned. Nothing goes as planned, the actress loses the promised role (which is offered to Juliette Binoche, with whom she is often confused) and will have to struggle to get it back. Even participating in a TV show in a giant hamster costume to attract the sympathy of the general public…
At the same time, a completely different drama is playing out. Her 16-year-old daughter (Tess Barthélémy, her real daughter in life), becomes infatuated with her dance teacher, much older than her. An idyll that revives the pain of one’s own adolescence… Dotted with flash blacks, the series takes us back to the end of the 1980s, to the beginning of the career of Judith Godrèche, barely 14 years old. We attend one of her very first castings where Eric, a forty-year-old director played by Loïc Corbery, is captivated in front of her. On the set, the filmmaker multiplies the takes with the young girl (played on screen by Alma Struve), like this scene of absolute unease where the actress, half-naked in the middle of a crowded film set, must kiss him again and again.
Little Judith becomes his lover, whom he carries around and displays like a doll in his adult world. One scene is particularly striking: the only child among the guests at a posh dinner, the young actress drinks glasses of wine with the director. Drunk, she ends up collapsing.
“There are all the ghosts of Judith”
If he is never named in the series, the story is reminiscent of Judith Godrèche’s relationship with director Benoît Jacquot at the end of the 1980s. More than twenty years separated the two lovers. “I never really talked about my youth in French cinema. I did a lot of analysis, but deep down, I never considered myself a subject,” the actress explained during a press conference. “It’s complicated to have a relationship with art when you are the object of the artist, when you are used by him,” she continues. At one time, young girls were considered objects and that was something I had never expressed. » Toxicity, controlling relationships, sexualization of the female body, gray zone and lack of request for consent on film sets… The episodes of the series address with intelligence and a certain humor, many issues denounced by the movement # MeToo for several years. They also highlight the omnipotence of men, true demiurges, on film sets.
“There are all the ghosts of Judith because this character is an amalgam of all these creators/creatures that she may have encountered,” believes actor Loïc Corbery. I have met so many in the theater and on film sets. Even today, there are still many directors who we say are slipping up on a human level. There is an outlet for laughing happily or seriously at these directors. Besides that, they are also people who are great artists. Their art does not explain everything, it was able to excuse it at one time, this is no longer the case today. »
“I lived in a complicit society”
In certain episodes, Judith Godrèche also confronts her parents, played on screen by Ludmila Mikaël and Didier Sandre. She tries to understand why they let her go with this man, agreeing to her legal emancipation. A serial settling of scores? “I don’t make judgments,” contests the actress. This is my story, for reasons that are specific to each person, I was emancipated. It’s difficult to talk about this world by isolating characters to say “he should have done this, she should have done this”. »
The actress uses fiction to establish an observation and draw lessons from it. “Basically, I lived in a complicit society. When I was doing 35 takes of a scene where I was shirtless and kissing an older man, no one asked me if I wanted to stop or if I was tired of it. There has not been an adult, in all my youth, who reached out to me to ask how I was. This was the world I lived in. This is my story and it is like this. Now what is interesting is to ensure that things evolve,” believes the actress.
Actor Loïc Corbery adds: “What I find powerful in the series is being able to talk about all that without conflict. To be able to think a little. We were all built in this world, with some good things and others not so good. How do we face this and try to move forward? In the series there is no settling of scores, there is a common reflection with confrontations sometimes, awareness of each other.
“When you imagine that it’s your mother, it’s a little weird”
This past and this experience, Judith Godrèche shares them today for her daughter. “She’s almost the reason for this series,” she believes. She explains: “What interests me is not to talk about myself but about what it means to be a young girl in the world of work. Basically, this relationship of power between the one who directs and the one who is directed is the same everywhere. Seeing my daughter and thinking about what she might experience fueled a desire to write and tell the story of my youth.”
A testimony that Tess Barthélémy, the daughter of the actress in the series and in reality, discovered through this fictional story. “She told me a little about her childhood but it was quite vague. She never let me see her films, I haven’t seen any of them,” she explains. She adds: “It’s hard to confront the fact that your parents experienced hard things or suffering. It is complicated. Seeing a 14 year old girl with a 14 year old body and mind, playing with an adult, that’s something. When you imagine that it’s his mother, it’s a little weird. » Will French cinema open its eyes?