Paris (AFP)
"I accuse", the film of Roman Polanski on the Dreyfus Affair, is released Wednesday in France, two months after seducing the Mostra but also irritated those who regret the parallel with this historical scandal established by the director, who esteem he too "persecuted".
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize in Venice, the Franco-Polish director's film, still being pursued in the United States for the rape of a minor in 1977, arrives on the screens at a time when the #MeToo movement has returned to one in France, after the statements of Adèle Haenel accusing the director Christophe Ruggia of "touching" and "harassment" as a teenager.
Thriller against the background of espionage, "J'accuse", tells the Dreyfus Affair, major scandal of the Third Republic that lasted twelve years (1894-1906), from the point of view of Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart, Chief of Services information.
Key figure in the outcome of the case, Picquart had disseminated the evidence to innocent Captain Dreyfus, French of Alsatian origin and Jewish confession, unjustly sentenced.
Co-written by Roman Polanski and the writer Robert Harris - with whom the filmmaker had already collaborated for "The Ghost Writer" - this broad, rigorous and meticulously composed film is strongly interpreted by Jean Dujardin, while retaining the role Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart, while Emmanuelle Seigner plays his mistress and Louis Garrel Captain Dreyfus.
- "terribly current story" -
Jean Dujardin had told Venice how Roman Polanski had been a "demanding" director, who "never saves himself". "Roman gave me a beautiful character," said Emmanuel Seigner, the filmmaker's wife.
Announced for years, initially under the title "D.", and initially planned in English, this film had been postponed several times, until Roman Polanski decides to turn in French this story, which he considers "terribly current, given the resurgence of anti-Semitism ".
Despite the laurels - "I accuse" had been awarded at the Mostra also by the prize Fipresci of international criticism - the film had also aroused reservations, especially because Roman Polanski had said repeatedly that he saw in this case an echo to his own story, considering himself "harassed" and "persecuted".
"I know many of the mechanisms of persecution that are at work in this film," says the 86-year-old filmmaker in the press kit, saying that "his + image + began to form with the death of Sharon Tate" , his wife murdered in 1969. The press then "insinuated among others that he was one of the instigators of his murder".
"All of this is chasing me again today, everything, anything, it's like a snowball, every season adds a layer of it."
The American magazine Variety had judged in Venice "obscene" the parallel drawn by Polanski between his situation and the story of Dreyfus, "an innocent man".
- "emblematic case" -
"There are certain aspects in Dreyfus' destiny that I know, but if you think that I compare myself to him, I do not even want to discuss it, it's completely stupid!", Nuance, however, the filmmaker this week in Le Point.
The controversy had caught up with Polanski in Venice even before the opening of the festival, feminists regretted his selection in competition, while the director, prosecuted by the American justice for the rape of a minor in 1977, and accused of sexual assault by three other women in recent years, regularly attracts their wrath.
In 2017, feminists had demonstrated in France against a retrospective of his films at the Cinémathèque. The same year he had to give up the presidency of the Caesar ceremony.
Adèle Haenel judged on Monday, on Mediapart, that the situation of Roman Polanski was "unfortunately an emblematic case" of abuse.
Jean Dujardin was not spared by the controversy either, to a lesser extent, for comments given to Elle magazine about #MeToo. "My idea of the woman does not go without that of her respect, but to be forced to say it is to be suspicious, it is tiring," he said, provoking strong reactions on social networks.
© 2019 AFP