INTERVIEW
A week after the ceremony, the prize list of the 45th César ceremony continues to stir French cinema, after the César for best director awarded to Roman Polanski and the departure from the hall of actress Adèle Haenel. While the strong reaction of the actress, or the refusal of the mistress of ceremonies Florence Foresti to return to the stage have sometimes been criticized by personalities defending the Franco-Polish filmmaker, the Secretary of State for Equality between women and men Marlène Schiappa, she understands the indignation aroused by the coronation of Roman Polanski.
"Do not ask us to applaud"
"I don't know if we can talk about radicalism when we have less than ten people leaving the room and Caesar given to a man accused of rape," reacts Marlène Schiappa, estimating that "what spoils the party are the sexual violence ". "I saw that there was little talk of cinema" during the Cesars, recognizes the secretary of state, "but for that, justice should be allowed to pass and that women should not have this feeling of impunity vis-à-vis sexual violence, "she said again.
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Caroline Fourest, she refuses to qualify the reactions of Florence Foresti and Adèle Haenel as radical. "If radicalism is Foresti and Haenel, no words have meaning anymore," she explains. Returning to the criticisms addressed to the Polanski protesters, the journalist says that she could have understood "that we are in this state of emotion if we had prohibited Polanski films (...) but that we are not asked not to applaud the fact of rewarding the man for the fifth time, as if there really was nobody else who deserved the César this year, and as if #MeToo had not passed ". And to conclude: "It is normal that today, we do not applaud".
"We feel that this evening has somewhat freed all the demons we feared," continues Caroline Fourest. "On the one hand there are those who no longer want to hear about the slightest nuance between a creator and his work, and those who explain to us that no longer consider as trivial the fact of being multi-accused or of having recognized relationships with underage girls after #MeToo is totalitarianism. It's another excess. "