The Consent of Vanessa Springora, on her relationship under the influence with the writer Gabriel Matzneff when she was a teenager, will be brought to the screen in 2021, announced Monday on Instagram the producers Carole Lambert and Marc Missonnier, confirming information from the review Le Film Français . This autobiographical novel, published by Grasset editions, sold more than 180,000 copies and caused an electric shock, highlighting the subject of sexual violence against minors and the complacency that Gabriel Matzneff has enjoyed in the literary world.
Director Vanessa Filho at the helm
The film rights for the book have been transferred to production companies Windy and Moana Films. The production and the script of this feature film were entrusted to the director Vanessa Filho, revealed in 2018 in Cannes with Gueule d'ange , presented in the Un Certain Regard section. The casting is not yet stopped.
In Le Consentement , Vanessa Springora tells how she was seduced by Gabriel Matzneff when she was not yet 14 years old, in the 80s. The day after the publication of the book in early January, the Paris prosecutor's office had opened an investigation for "rapes committed on minors under 15 years". Vanessa Springora's book describes a man with predatory behavior, also engaged in sex tourism in Asia.
Vanessa Springora is the first to testify among the teenage girls seduced by Gabriel Matzneff, whose behavior, described in his own books, has long been tolerated in the Parisian literary world. In 2013, he won the Renaudot prize for the essay. For Vanessa Springora, "this book was an enterprise of honesty towards (herself), since it was the occasion to (her) reappropriate (her) history". " Consent has allowed me to reinvent myself. Today, I have the impression that a chapter has closed, which allows me to move on to something else, but which is still me", a- she added in an interview with JDD published on Sunday.