Gérard Depardieu is because of attend court docket in Paris on Monday as his trial on sexual assault prices, associated to occasions alleged to have taken place in 2021 on the set of The Inexperienced Shutters, kicks off this afternoon.
The trial, scheduled to start at 1.30pm native time (5.30 a.m. PT), will look at two separate accusations by a set decorator and an assistant director who say they had been sexually assaulted by Depardieu on the set of Jean Becker’s The Inexperienced Shutters.
Based mostly on the eponymous 1950 novel by Georges Simenon, Depardieu stars a tyrannical, celebrated actor on the peak of his powers, within the grip of a private disaster.
Monday’s trial follows a rising variety of public allegations of sexually inappropriate conduct in opposition to Depardieu, which he denies.
These accusations have destroyed his fame as certainly one of France’s most celebrated actors, recognized internationally for his Oscar-nominated efficiency in Cyrano de Bergerac in addition to his position reverse Andie Macdowell in Peter Weir’s romantic comedy Inexperienced Card.
Monday’s trial will mark the primary time Depardieu is in court docket on official prices of sexual assault.
In response to a report by investigative information web site Mediapart in 2024, the set decorator, named merely as Amélie, recounted that Depardieu had “grabbed her brutally” and “locked her in by closing his legs round her” and “kneed her waist, abdomen, going up her breasts”.
Different crew members who prised the actor off, urged her to lodge an official grievance and the incident was additionally raised with the director Becker, who was additionally supportive of such a transfer, in accordance with her account to Mediapart.
The set decorator, who has since left the cinema business, additionally recounted how she had tried to keep away from contact with Depardieu for the remainder of the manufacturing, however each time their paths crossed, he would give her a darkish look and mutter insults underneath his breath.
In a separate official case, Depardieu additionally faces an official grievance of two acts of rape relationship again to 2018 by actress Charlotte Arnould, which remains to be making its method by way of the courts some seven years later.
Depardieu has denied the rape allegations and mounting sexual assault accusations in opposition to him, even publishing a letter within the Le Figaro newspaper in October 2023, suggesting his acts had been misinterpreted.
The letter adopted an in depth investigative report by French investigative information web site Médiapart in April 2023, during which 13 ladies accused the actor of sexually inappropriate conduct.
Two months after the open letter, Depardieu got here underneath additional public scrutiny following the printed of a bombshell version of investigative present Complément d’Enquête, which probed these historic accusations in addition to different acts of inappropriate conduct.
Information of Depardieu’s anticipated look was lined by all of French media, which for a very long time didn’t deal with allegations effervescent within the movie business in opposition to him.
Libération newspaper, which has led reporting on the case with Mediapart, signaled the broader implications of the trial.
“Who might be tried on March 24 and 25… A person like some other…? A logo? Or a ‘monster’ so sacred for thus lengthy that it went with out saying that he was far above the legal guidelines and guidelines and accountable to no-one?,” requested the newspaper in a two-page unfold in its Monday version.
