French film director Catherine Corsini has hit back at claims she harassed crew and put children at risk during the shooting of her film shortlisted for the Cannes Palme d’Or award.
The row over Le Retour (Homecoming) has divided France’s film world, with one director announcing a boycott of the festival and feminists claiming that the industry has learned nothing from #MeToo.
In an open letter, Corsini and her partner, the producer Elisabeth Perez, denied any wrongdoing on the set of Le Retour, which will have its world premiere at next month’s festival and claimed that they were victims of anonymous rumours.
The allegations had initially led to the film being excluded from the prestigious competition at the Cannes film festival this year but after event officials investigated, it was listed among the 19 films shortlisted for the Palme d’Or.
“Anonymous and defamatory emails have been sent to the profession and the press, generating a rumour that was very damaging for the film. Thankfully, the biggest festival in the world took the time to minutely check the truth,” read the statement posted on Tuesday evening by Corsini’s Paris-based Chaz Productions company.
Le Retour, Corsini’s 12th full-length film and the third to feature at Cannes, follows a woman who travels to Corsica with her wealthy Paris employers to look after their children during the summer holidays. The woman is accompanied by her two teenage daughters who left the island with their mother years before. While she struggles with memories, her daughters enjoy discovering their roots.
The anonymous letters that were sent to the culture and film authorities and Cannes organisers contained a number of allegations that Corsini had been “aggressive and authoritarian” during filming prompting two “humiliated” crew members to walk out. The letters also claimed that rules concerning working conditions, the safeguarding of minors and allegations of sexual abuse were ignored.
The main allegation was that during the shoot last autumn in the Corsican village of Castifao the production team introduced a masturbation scene by an actor, who was 15 years old at the time acting in her first film role, without informing the Commission des Enfants du Spectacle which oversees the safeguarding of minors on film sets.
The film subsequently lost €680,000 of state funding – out of a €4.7m budget – for breaking safeguarding rules for minors. The scene did not make the final cut.
Perez had insisted the scene had been omitted from the submitted script because of an administrative error and said she and Corsini rejected the damaging allegations and were against “every form of violence and harassment on set”.
“We want to reiterate that there is no complaint of any kind against Catherine Corsini, nor against the production of the film. The only irregularity noted at the end of an investigation by the Central Committee on Health and Safety and Working Conditions (CCHSCT), which we recognised very early on, is an administrative failure, that of an undeclared scene and therefore not covered by the Commission des Enfants du Spectacle”, the pair said in a statement.
Esther Gohourou, the young actor who took part in the masturbation scene also denied any mistreatment. “A lot of people have spoken for me but I haven’t… Catherine offered me understudies and even an intimacy coach and I refused,” Gohourou said. “We knew what we were going to have to shoot, that we would only see the faces and that we wouldn’t have to touch each other in real life. And that’s what happened,” she added.
In a statement, actor Denis Podalydès, who stars in Le Retour also defended the director and producer. ”I’ve been on a hundred shoots, I know what it’s like on a set that’s riddled with dissension, conflict, unspoken words, harassment. You can feel it, you know it straight away, because a film set is so porous and transmits everything that happens on it in successive waves. At no time during my presence on the set of Le Retour did I notice the slightest problem or feel the slightest discomfort, quite the contrary.”
An investigation by the newspaper Libération described the shoot as “chaotic” and claimed the film had been reported to the public prosecutor for “the sexualised context of the shoot with adolescent actresses and actors”. The paper quoted an anonymous on-set technician saying the young actors were ill at ease during the masturbation scene that took 17 takes. The paper said it had been told complaints were made to Corsini and Perez about two crew members who were alleged to have behaved inappropriately towards young actors.
The news that the film has been added to the official Cannes competition has divided the French film industry. Thierry Frémaux, the director of the festival, had initially withdrawn an invitation to Corsini to present the film at Cannes in order to carry out an investigation, before announcing on Monday that Le Retour would be admitted.
Producer Marc Missonnier, who worked on Swimming Pool, and 8 Women made by director François Ozon and Marguerite by Xavier Giannoli said including the film suggested the festival authorities are out of tune with the time.
“Mind-blowing to see how disconnected the biggest film festival in the world is from what is happening today and to see how much the whole issue of limits, especially in the case of scenes of a sexual nature, is ignored by French cinema,” Missonnier tweeted. “In full knowledge of the facts, after all the articles that have appeared and the recognised facts, that Thierry Frémaux chooses to take a problematic film in competition, spitting in the face of all those who might have the courage to denounce reprehensible facts and finally considering that it’s not that bad.”
Missonnier said he would be boycotting Cannes. “Curious to see also how the Americans will react to this choice, those who will find themselves side by side with this film and who will be questioned about it. As far as I’m concerned, my choice is made: #BoycottCannes,” he added.
Collectif 50/50, which represents 1,500 professionals from the film and arts industry and was launched in 2018 after the #MeToo movement, also signalled “its consternation” at the film’s selection for the Palme d’Or.
“This is obviously a devastating signal sent to victims of gender-based and sexual violence,” it said. “It’s also a sign that the Cannes film festival in 2023 has not evolved sufficiently to take into consideration the subject of moral, sexist and sexual violence.”
