The actor and director Judith Godrèche arrived in Cannes as the ostensible “ambassador” of France’s #MeToo movement. She has spent the past three tumultuous months campaigning for French victims of sexual abuse, during which time she accused the film directors and former collaborators Jacques Doillon and Benôit Jacquot of rape (both deny the accusation) and called for an end to France’s so-called “omertà” around acts of sexual violence. She was added earlier this month to the official Cannes selection with her own short film called Moi Aussi. It’s a movie, she suggested, that would help start a “revolution” in the industry.
Tongues, of course, immediately started wagging, and when an anonymous list of ten alleged abusers in French film was sent to the National Cinema Centre, it seemed only logical that Moi Aussi, with its high-profile Cannes launch, would be the weaponised scandal bomb to finally blow a predatory establishment wide apart.
The film, it transpires, is not that weapon. It’s much softer and more ameliorative than that, and takes the form of a gentle and symbolic flashmob that occurred in Paris earlier this year, and was designed and documented by Godrèche. Here 1,000 victims of abuse, mostly women, interact with a metaphorical ballet sprite called Her (Tess Barthélémy), who dances expressively through the stages of recovery and self-empowerment while the Indie jangly folk music of Faux Amis (the band of Godrèche’s son Noé Boon) plays on the soundtrack. Her’s hands initially cover her mouth, seemingly unable to speak. But she slowly moves them apart, joins hands with other women, and is ultimately liberated by the physical component of collective action. In voiceover, meanwhile, Godrèche reads snippets from the testimonies of abuse victims, with sentences layered together into an overlapping crush of accusations that becomes powerful and oppressive and contains the notable soundbites “a French director” and “a famous actor”.
Some of the dance choreography doesn’t quite land. A mass “whispering gesture” for instance, followed by the communal giggles of those involved looks eerily representative of “gossip”, which certainly isn’t the correct messaging. Yet any quibbles are wiped away by the knockout closing sequence, featuring a fixed camera past which every person in the crowd marches, clearly encouraged to stare fearlessly down the lens. It might seem gimmicky at first, but after a thousand faces, it becomes eminently affecting. It’s a gesture that boldly defies cinema’s golden rule (don’t look at the camera!) while simultaneously reminding us of the individual personal cost of each act of abuse to each person and each soul. Strong stuff.
★★★☆☆
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