
It’s hard to imagine that any of these conversations would be happening had Monnier, who is now 62, not published her letter.

Even though Polanski hasn’t faced legal action relating to any of the more recent allegations, something about the stories “disturbs me,” she said. “We live in a state of law,” she said in a meeting last week with the Anglo-American Press Association, adding that it was up to the police and the courts to do their work.
ALFRED DREYFUS MOVIE FREE
She said she personally wouldn’t see it, but that in the name of free expression, she opposed a boycott. A government spokeswoman, Sibeth Ndiaye, has repeatedly weighed in on the new Polanski film. The Macron government has been encouraging women to libérer la parole, or speak out against harassment, even after the statute of limitations for pressing charges has expired, although it has not made any changes to French legislation on the matter. A mass movement is afoot to call attention to domestic violence and femicides. But the cultural and political atmosphere in France has begun to change. In the most vivid case, unrelated to Polanski, the actress Adèle Hanael alleged this month that she was sexually abused for years as a child by the director Christophe Ruggia (he has denied all allegations). The #MeToo movement has only recently and only modestly begun to take root here.

The French media reported that the first lady had said she could not intervene in judicial matters, but had sent the letter to two members of President Emmanuel Macron’s cabinet: the culture minister and the equal-opportunities minister. Monnier told Le Parisien that she had also taken her story directly to Brigitte Macron, the first lady of France, before publishing it. The statute of limitations for Monnier’s claims has long since expired, but she appears to be the first French woman to make her allegations public. Among others, the actress Charlotte Lewis came forward in Britain in 2010. Monnier is the sixth woman to publicly accuse the director of sexual abuse or rape. (In 2018, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expelled Polanski for ethical violations, and he is suing to get his spot back.) And this week, France’s directors’ guild said it planned to introduce a motion to remove Polanski from its ranks, based on a new rule that suspends any members who have been placed under judicial investigation and bans those who have been convicted of crimes of a sexual nature. Emmanuelle Seigner, Polanski’s wife, who appears in An Officer and a Spy, canceled an interview with France’s leading morning radio show during the promotion tour, the show’s host said. The hashtag #BoycottPolanski sprang up ahead of the debut, although it’s unclear to what effect. Polanski denies all accusations.Īfter Monnier came forward, one of the film’s Paris premieres was scrapped because of protests by women’s-rights activists. On November 8, Valentine Monnier, a French former model and actress, took to the pages of Le Parisien, a Paris daily, to accuse Polanski of raping and beating her until she lost consciousness at his Swiss chalet in 1975, when she was 18 and he was 42.
ALFRED DREYFUS MOVIE MOVIE
The movie is set between 1894, when Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army, was convicted of treason and sentenced to prison on charges of espionage trumped up by his anti-Semitic superiors, and 1906, when Dreyfus was finally pardoned, thanks in large part to the novelist Emile Zola’s legendary letter, “ J’Accuse” (or “I accuse”).Ī week before the film’s release, another J’accuse letter appeared.

It’s a vivid historical drama about a moment that shaped modern France. Polanski’s latest film, An Officer and a Spy (known here as J’Accuse), opened last week, and has been leading the box office. But today, the winds are shifting a bit in France. in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl, and has successfully evaded extradition back to the States over the years, most recently in 2016, when Poland rejected the request. PARIS-The French cultural establishment has defended, protected, and lauded Roman Polanski.
