INTERVIEW - Andréa Bescond and Baptiste Masseline for “Nudes”: “We are doing our young people a disservice by leaving them in a situation of impunity”

Solène Delinger 08:00, February 1, 2024

This Thursday, February 1, Prime Video is broadcasting “Nudes”, its new series exploring the journey of three young people from Generation Z and the impact of social networks on their social and romantic lives. Andréa Bescond, to whom we owe the film "Les Chatouilles", films the story of Victor (played by Baptiste Masseline) a medical student from a bourgeois family whose life is turned upside down the day Sarah files a complaint against him . She assures her: Victor filmed her making love and posted the video on Snapchat. Victor maintains his innocence, but is he really? Europe1.fr spoke with Andréa Bescond and Baptiste Masseline to talk about this ambiguous character and more broadly about online harassment and its dramatic consequences. Interview.

How do teenagers love each other today? How have social networks changed their relationship to love and sexuality, and exacerbated a certain violence? All these questions are found in

Nudes

, a new series from Prime Video divided into three distinct chapters to tell the story of three young people from Gen Z: Sofia, Ada and Victor. Andréa Bescond, known for her commitment against sexual violence, directed the four episodes on Victor, played by Baptiste Masseline. This medical student, at first glance very friendly, films a sexual video of Sarah, one of his classmates, during an evening. The video is found on social networks and Sarah files a complaint against him. Victor proclaims his innocence. He filmed Sarah without her consent but did not broadcast the video. Over the course of the episodes, Victor's much more troubled personality emerges, who will do everything to exonerate himself and make his victim feel guilty.

Why did Andréa Bescond want to make this character very human? And how did Baptiste Masseline manage to put himself in the shoes of an aggressor? Interview. 

Why did you choose Victor's point of view to tell this story?

Andréa Bescond: I had already explored the angle of victims of violence with my film

Les Chatouilles

 in which it was a question of child crime and in my TV film

A la Folie

, sur l'influence. On Instagram, I have recently been writing "black posts" and I adopt the point of view of the perpetrators of violence or the institutions that I consider responsible. Victor's story immediately struck a chord with me. That's what I wanted to address and not from a super binary point of view. I wanted to work on young people and show that Victor is not a monster. It's not all black and white and you have to understand this gray area. 

Why did you choose Baptiste to play the role of Victor?

Andréa Bescond: It's funny but I already had an actor in mind when I arrived at the meeting with Amazon at the very beginning of the project. They then told me about Baptiste, who played for them in the

Mixte

series . I was a little reluctant but I googled his name anyway. I came across his photos and said to myself: “Ah yes, he has incredible photogenic skills!” I was struck by his gaze and his very luminous side. I was looking for exactly that for my character. I met him a few days later for coffee and I immediately felt that he was as crazy about work as I was. That reassured me a lot because for me, on a set, everyone has to work otherwise it doesn't go very well and I'm not happy. I knew that Baptiste was going to follow me so I immediately offered him the role, I didn't even cast him. It was also a way of giving him confidence. 

Baptiste, were you immediately convinced by this project?

Baptiste Masseline: Completely! I'm 23 years old and someone is reaching out to me for a very significant role so I'm going straight for it! I also loved having this connection in the work with Andréa. She is both demanding and very caring. I'm here to try things and I'm also here to accept being wrong, and then arrive at something right that we'll find together with my comrades on set. 

Were you afraid of slipping into the shoes of an attacker?

Baptiste Masseline: It didn't scare me because it's something that is completely opposite to me. I was intrigued by this character because I wanted to understand the mechanisms and reasons that push certain people to commit these kinds of atrocities. I needed to understand. I was very well guided by Andréa who masters this subject.

In the series, Victor is Baptiste's age, he is a medical student. He's a boy like any other...

Andréa Bescond: That’s absolutely what I wanted to highlight. I can't stand hearing that attackers are monsters anymore. No, he's your brother, he's your father, he's your neighbor, he's your boyfriend, he's the man you love. In the series, there is not a single shot without Baptiste. It was important for me that he was always in the image so that we love his character, so that we suffer from his behavior but love him all the same and say to ourselves: "This paradox "I have to understand that." Because those are the aggressors! 

At the start of the series, Victor seems to be more aware of the harm he has done than his own parents. His mother completely minimizes the facts. She talks about a “sex story gone wrong”. Can we say that it is generational? 

Andréa Bescond: No, because that would be a way of clearing parents' minds and because we see that there are very young people who also think like that today.

It's cultural. We have a problem around rape culture in general, and particularly in our country. I speak well in the West because I am not going to compare us to Iran and Afghanistan. Culturally, sexual assault and rape are primarily the fault of the victim. And then it’s very downplayed. At the time of the law on incest, Eric Dupond-Moretti said: "We are not going to put 19-year-olds in prison." In

Nudes

, we know from the start that Victor filmed this 17-year-old girl without her consent. It is still a very violent act.

We understand throughout the series that he did it out of jealousy and because he was rejected by this girl at the start of the evening. Do you think this is the only reason? 

Baptiste Masseline: He takes his revenge on something he does not control and which does not belong to him. We realize that this drives him totally crazy. There is also a family context: Victor does not communicate with his parents. He feels a little more isolated and he has no one to help him move forward on the right path. 

Andréa Bescond: It's very important to talk about it because it's absolutely not anecdotal. It's mostly men who do this because they are rejected, left, or deceived. It's the same for feminicides. We often hear: “She has to go!”. But if she leaves, that's when she is even more violently abused or even killed! Our boys have been taught so much to possess that they consider themselves to possess the people with whom they enter into a relationship. This is what needs to change and it comes down to culture. 

In the series, we clearly see Victor's feeling of impunity. Why was it important to show it?

Andréa Bescond: Because this feeling of impunity makes him even more violent and makes him go even further in the desire for domination and submission of women. We are not doing our young people a favor by leaving them in a situation of total impunity!

So what should we do when faced with young people who bully?

Andréa Bescond: We must return to the roots of violence. I was a victim of child abuse at 9 years old. Violence can come out of me in two seconds and I always have to work on it. Imagine when you are 16 years old, you are lost, you live in an increasingly difficult society and on top of that there is no dialogue at home... The bully is also a victim. I don't want to minimize the impact of harassment but we must not be repressive and tell these young people that they are worthless, violent and that they will achieve nothing. Instead, you should ask them: "What's the problem? What made you destroy someone?" Unfortunately, we don't do it because we don't have a prevention policy.

In 

Nudes

, Victor's victim is a minor. Why this choice ? 

Andréa Bescond: Under 18, you are still a child. There are people who get angry when I write this on social networks but it's the truth and I wanted to show it in the series. I also wanted to deal with this gray area between leaving childhood and entering adulthood through the character of Victor because he is also very young. It is the entire social and dominant context that leads him to have this disrespect towards women. 

This disrespect gets worse as the episodes go on... Baptiste, how did you work to play the evolution of Victor, a luminous character who descends into violence? 

Baptiste Masseline: I thought of my theater teacher who told me one day: “When you act, you are not completely yourself, but you are not completely someone else”. That is to say that we bring ideas, things from our lives to make our character unique. Victor's breakup scene with his girlfriend was particularly trying because I had to call on a lot of emotions that were buried deep inside me. Suddenly my own story came back to me because I was passionate about a person who left overnight without saying goodbye. I burst into tears and Andrea left the camera rolling. 

Andréa Bescond: I didn't want him to prepare for that because it would have seemed a bit fake. During the entire shoot, I forbade Baptiste to cry even though he is very sensitive. There, when the emotion rose and he let everything go, I said to myself that it was absolutely brilliant. 

Baptiste Masseline: Andréa really took me where I needed to be.