When we meet her at the La Rochelle Fiction Festival on September 14, Muriel Robin doesn’t have the heart to laugh. She came to Charente-Maritime to present, out of competition, Eyes wide closed, a fiction about incest – broadcast this Monday at 9:10 p.m., on TF1. She plays a woman whose certainties are turned upside down when her son, played by Guillaume Labbé, is accused of raping his grandson. HAS 20 minutesshe confides that the filming “impacted” her.
Can we say that this role is more than a role for you? That it is a commitment?
Yes. Saying yes to this project was obvious. It is important for me to talk about such topics. TV allows that. I think a film like Eyes wide closed, at the cinema, would not make an entry. It was the same thing, moreover, for Jacqueline Sauvage. Television makes it possible to reach out to families. That parents can watch, with their children, then have a discussion about it with them seems to me to bring a small stone to the building concerning this scourge about which there is everything to be done.
So you play a mother who cannot conceive that her son could be capable of abusing her grandson…
We’re in a sort of thriller. If her son has done something, she must report him so that he goes to prison. Can a mother put her son in prison? If she stays silent, she abandons her grandson, who will have a ruined life. So what is she going to do? You have to watch the film for that… but it’s complicated.
This fiction also shows that, if adults talk a lot about what may or may not have happened, we do not try to listen to the main person concerned, the child…
Children are often not listened to. Or poorly listened to. And then we don’t want to see that thing, it’s very difficult. First, a mother who speaks will be called a liar. She will be accused of wanting revenge on the man she separated from or something else. A woman, when she is beaten, she lies, when she is raped, she lies and when she witnesses incest, she lies. We decided that, we will have to change that too at some point. I said no one wants to see that. It is this silence that must be broken. Education is needed. I read the interview with Emmanuelle Béart in She. She says that her incestor didn’t need to tell her to shut up. [ « Ce qu’il y a de terrible, c’est que souvent, la personne qui agresse n’a pas besoin de dire “Tais-toi !”, c’est implicite, on se tait. Et puis il y a la peur, aussi, de ne pas être cru. »] This is what is unbearable, imagining this child alone with this suffering. And then there are those who think that speaking out means breaking up a family. So how much does a child’s life weigh?
The numbers are dizzying. In France, one child in ten is a victim of incest…
This means that in a class of thirty, there are three children who are incest. We know that today, 5.5 million people in France were attacked in their childhood, that 30 to 40% of incest victims become incestors, so if we do nothing this will continue. We know things and we will all live with them just as we all lived very well with the women who were beaten every two and a half days. Are we, the people, going to end up saying that we can no longer live with this? Or will we keep quiet because we have other things to do, because life is here, and it doesn’t concern us… In any case, during that time, the children…
And when there are legal proceedings, only 3% of complaints for rape of a minor result in a conviction…
There is something that is not in place. We have to change things. We cannot live in a country where we look at children and say “Is that…?” » and where we look at men and ask ourselves: “Is he hitting his wife? Does he ever put his hand down his daughter’s panties from time to time? » For you men, it’s going to be terrible. We have always put it under the umbrella of “pathology”, we do medical work with the child and with the incestor. However, the incestor has no impulses, he hides to attack. If he cannot do it at the moment T, he postpones his plan.
Did you do any documentation for this shoot?
This shoot had an impact on me.
That’s to say ?
I commit, I go to 119 [numéro dédié à la prévention et à la protection des enfants en danger] listen to testimonies, I am next to the Secretary of State [Charlotte Caubel, chargée de l’Enfance], I read things… I don’t have children. For me, incest is not a priori my priority but hey, all children are my children, all women are my sisters and all men are my brothers. I wonder what I can do. If a child withdraws into himself, if he is violent, scarifies himself… should we ask ourselves the question or not: “What if that was it?” » I answer yes. Because to say no is to miss the point. The whole question is: do we want to see it?
Do you think this TV movie could help some people open their eyes to what’s happening around them?
I think it has a mission of awakening, of becoming aware of the reality of the situation. The mistake would be to say to ourselves: “This can’t happen here”. What does “at home” mean? And yes, it could be in your home: one child in ten is a victim. If this happens, we will not judge you, it is not you who committed the rape, it is someone close to you. I would like parents to talk about it so that, if one day it happens, the child knows that he can say things. For the moment, no one is talking about it, we are at level zero.
What would you say to viewers who are reluctant to watch this fiction on incest?
I would say that if you like thrillers, you have to watch. Did his son do it? Didn’t he do it? Is she going to report him? Which side will she take? There is also emotion. And then come on, you also have to be a little interested in what happens to others. Let’s be with this grandmother, put ourselves in her place and ask ourselves what we are doing.