Paris (AFP)
Vanessa Springora's "Consent", on her relationship with writer Gabriel Matzneff as a teenager, will be screened in 2021, producers Carole Lambert and Marc Missonnier announced Monday on Instagram, confirming a 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 which Mr. Matzneff has enjoyed in the literary world. The film rights for the book have been transferred to production companies Windy and Moana Films.
The production and the screenplay 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 "The Consent", 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 at the beginning of January, the Paris prosecutor's office had opened an investigation for "rapes committed on a minor under 15".
Vanessa Springora's book describes a man with predatory behavior, also engaged in sex tourism in Asia. Ms. 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 + 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 the JDD published on Sunday.
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