Indictment for rape, obscene remarks, boycott... The year when everything changed for Gérard Depardieu

Symbol of sexual violence and the crassest machismo for some, national pride for others, Gérard Depardieu, who celebrates his 75th birthday on Wednesday, has lost his aura as an untouchable icon. Despite being indicted for rape in 2020, following a complaint from an actress in her twenties, Charlotte Arnould, the actor increased the number of shoots with the eclecticism that characterizes him (Lost Illusions, Maison retirement, Les Volets verts, Maigret...). And kept its status as a sacred monster of French cinema, as there are not many of them anymore.

Alain Delon, who divides by his reactionary positions, left the sets, just like Brigitte Bardot who stands out for her declarations against Islam. Only Catherine Deneuve, 80, who co-signed a much-discussed column in 2018 on the “freedom to bother” women, continues to tour and be celebrated. The star has not spoken in recent days about Depardieu, with whom she has shared the stage ten times.

Beyond feminist circles, Depardieu has until now benefited from a certain leniency. His loud-mouthed, willingly outrageous temperament has long attracted the sympathy of the public and the profession. His statements about rapes in which he allegedly took part in his youth certainly cost him his American career in the early 1990s but had little resonance in France.

When an actress as popular as Sophie Marceau described him as a “predator” in 2015 for his behavior on set, her words rang hollow. The 7th art prefers to praise the actor with more than 200 films in cinema and television, with instinctive acting and work bulimia, who will have interpreted the great heroes of national literature, from Cyrano to Jean Valjean from Les Misérables, in passing through Obelix.

But at the end of 2023, the clown Depardieu, who was able to urinate in a plane cabin in 2011, no longer makes people laugh. He put his career on hold and is now the most divisive artist in the country. Everything accelerated in less than a month, after the publication in the magazine Complément d'investigation of images in which he made numerous obscene statements towards women, and in particular towards a little girl.

The sequence is sickening. Depardieu is removed from the National Order of Quebec, loses his title of honorary citizen of a Belgian commune, sees his wax statue removed from the Grévin museum... Some cinema personalities publicly turn their backs on him, such as actress Anouk Grinberg. A pro-Depardieu camp is mobilizing: his family, including his daughter, the actress Julie Depardieu, denounces a "cabal", his ex-partner Carole Bouquet defends the "sometimes borderline humor" of a man who would be "incapable of harm a woman. And on Tuesday, around sixty cultural figures denounced a “lynching” in a column in Le Figaro, including the director Bertrand Blier, the actresses Nathalie Baye and Charlotte Rampling, the actors Jacques Weber, Pierre Richard and Gérard Darmon, the singers Roberto Alagna, Carla Bruni, Arielle Dombasle or Jacques Dutronc.

Also read “Don’t erase Gérard Depardieu”: the appeal of 50 personalities from the world of culture

Above all, the Depardieu affair took on another dimension when Emmanuel Macron, in the middle of one of the deepest political crises of his presidency, the adoption of the immigration law with the support of the far right, takes up the cause of the actor. The president denounces a “manhunt” and disavows his Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, who questioned his Legion of Honor. “He made France, our great authors, our great characters known throughout the world (...) he makes France proud,” declared Emmanuel Macron. His predecessor François Hollande takes the opposite view of his proposal by assuring: “No, we are not proud of Gérard Depardieu”.

The native of Châteauroux has a troubled history with his homeland, since he announced at the end of 2012 that he was surrendering his passport to protest against the taxation of the richest and opting for tax exile in Belgium. An admirer of the most authoritarian leaders, he also acquired Russian citizenship. On the judicial level, in addition to his indictment for rape, Depardieu, who rejects the accusations, is the target of a complaint for sexual assault filed by the actress Hélène Darras for facts a priori prescribed, as well as another in Spain by a journalist, Ruth Baza, accusing him of rape in 1995. Depardieu's supporters made his defense a symbol of the fight for the presumption of innocence.

“You can accuse someone, there may be victims, but there is also a presumption of innocence that exists,” stressed Emmanuel Macron. “I simply want” that Gérard Depardieu “can defend his rights like everyone else” and “continue to work, to create,” he added.