Paris (AFP)

"We try to make me a monster": Roman Polanski retaliates for the first time since the accusation of rape of the French Valentine Monnier, denouncing an "aberrant story" and accusing producer Harvey Weinstein for relaunching attacks against him in 2003.

In an interview with Paris Match magazine to be published on Thursday, which he made the front page, the director of 86 years "absolutely denies", as he had already done through his lawyer a month ago, accusations of Valentine Monnier. This French photographer claims to have been hit and raped by Polanski in 1975 in Switzerland when she was eighteen.

Claiming to remember "barely" of her, the director says "obviously have no memory of what she tells, since it's wrong". "I absolutely deny it," he continues. "His face in the published photos tells me something, no more."

"It is easy to accuse when everything has been prescribed for decades, and when it is certain that there can be no judicial procedure to exculpate me," said the filmmaker Franco-Polish.

- "Delirious" -

In a testimony published early November by Le Parisien, a few days before the release of the new film by Roman Polanski "J'accuse", the photographer and ex-model Valentine Monnier says that while she went skiing in Gstaad (Switzerland ) with a young girl at the filmmaker's, he "beat her up to her surrender" and then "raped by doing all the vicissitudes" in her cottage.

"It's crazy, I do not hit women! Probably the rape charges are not enough sensation, it was necessary to add a layer," defends Roman Polanski.

"She is witnessing three of my friends present at the cottage: my assistant Hercules Bellville, Gérard Brach and his wife, Elizabeth.The first two are dead - it's convenient, they can no longer confirm or refute what she said. As for Mrs Brach, the newspaper has not found it ", continues the filmmaker, for whom" this story is aberrant ".

Valentine Monnier had stated that she had not filed a complaint for these prescribed facts. But she said she decided to publicly make the accusation because of the release of the film "J'accuse", which is about a miscarriage of justice, the Dreyfus case.

This accusation adds to those of other women in recent years against Roman Polanski, still being sued by the US Justice for Illegal Sex in 1977 with a minor, Samantha Geimer.

- Charges against Weinstein -

In an unexpected outing, Roman Polanski accuses producer Harvey Weinstein, accused of sexual abuse by more than 80 women and catalyst of the #MeToo movement. He accuses the fallen mogul of having "unearthed" his case with Samantha Geimer who "no longer interested" in the 2003 Oscar campaign, where "Le Pianiste" was one of the favorites before winning three statuettes .

"His press officer was the first to call me a + child rapist +," adds the filmmaker, who laments in Paris Match that "for years, we try to make (him) a monster".

"I got used to slander, my skin has thickened, hardened like a carapace, but for my children, for Emmanuelle (Seigner, his wife, Ed), it's terrible, it's for them that I speak for me, I do not even hope to change the course of things, "says the director, who regrets that his family" pays the price almost half a century later "the" fault "he committed in 1977 "with Samantha Geimer.

"The media threw themselves on me with unheard-of violence, they seize every new false accusation, even absurd and without substance, because it allows them to revive this story." It's like a curse that comes back and I can not do nothing about it ... "

Following this new accusation, "J'accuse" had an eventful release in France, feminists blocked sessions and called for boycotting. Grand Prix of the Jury in Venice, the film however has made recipe with already more than 1.2 million spectators.

© 2019 AFP