Gérard Depardieu will stand trial on Monday for sexually assaulting two women in the first big legal reckoning in France’s version of the MeToo movement, reports The Times.
The 75-year-old actor, a giant of French cinema, is accused of groping, grabbing and harassing the women on the set of Jean Becker’s Les Volet Verts (The Green Shutters) in Paris in 2021.
The trial, which comes five years after an actress first accused Depardieu of rape, is seen as a test of a supposed shift away from France’s tolerance of toxic male behaviour in the entertainment world. “This case will also be a trial of French cinema because it involves the scenes of sexual assault that are apparently ordinary on film sets” the news magazine Marianne said.
In an echo of the prosecution in 2017 of Harvey Weinstein, the American producer, 21 women have made claims of assault against Depardieu. Six investigations have been opened and an examining judge will rule shortly on whether to try him for raping Charlotte Arnould, an actress. The Paris prosecutor requested the indictment in August after investigating her claim that Depardieu raped and sexually assaulted her in his Paris home in 2018 when she was 22. He claims that she consented.
Depardieu, who has been defended by President Macron and some eminent women in the film industry, denies all the allegations and claims that he is the victim of malice.