For Guillaume Canet, it is “impossible to go and promote” Benoît Jacquot’s latest film

“Impossible to go and promote.” Guillaume Canet spoke to BFM TV about Belle, the next film by Benoît Jacquot, the director accused of rape by Judith Godrèche, in which he plays one of the main roles. He also claims not to know the release date of the feature film.

The film by Benoît Jacquot is an adaptation of the novel La Mort de Belle, written by Georges Simenon, in 1951. Pierre (Guillaume Canet) and Cléa (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg), an ordinary couple, see their lives turned upside down when the young girl they they take in, Belle, is murdered in their home. While the release date of the film is not yet known, Guillaume Canet explained in La Tribune du Dimanche that “given the situation”, it seemed “very complicated to ensure the promotion” of the film. “For the moment, the question does not even arise,” he added.

At the microphone of BFM TV, he specifies that he considers it “complicated to promote a film with what happened, with what was told, with all that. So, no, that would be a way of endorsing, of validating something that I don’t want.”

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The 50-year-old actor also clarified his state of mind regarding MeToo and recent speeches in French cinema. “It’s a movement that is more than necessary, that we must support and encourage,” he says. I think it's been a very long time, but not only in cinema. There are plenty of other professional sectors.” Guillaume Canet notably remembers a “very big scandal in figure skating” that occurred a few years ago. In 2020, the former skating champion, Sarah Abitbol, ​​published Un si long silence, a novel in which she recounts the rapes suffered by her coach when she was 15 years old. “There was unacceptable behavior with veils that were placed on it,” continues Guillaume Canet. “It’s very important that things evolve,” he continues. And we must be attentive to all these testimonies which I find very courageous.

Judith Godrèche is among the latest to have testified. She filed a complaint for rape of a minor against the director Benoît Jacquot, who directed it and with whom she had a relationship for several years from the age of 14. Before the deputies, the 51-year-old actress asked last week for the creation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into labor law in the world of cinema and “the risks for children”.