Emmanuelle Béart with Michel Piccoli in the 1991 film “La Belle Noisy” Photo: Alami
French cinema has produced countless actors who enjoy enormous international fame. over the past few decades; these include Juliette Binoche, Jean Reno and Léa Seydoux, to name a few. But it is Emmanuel Béart who, more than any other Gallic star, seems to embody a mixture of worldly sophistication, theatrical skill and striking beauty.
From the film that made her an international sensation (the title role in the 1986 drama of the same name, Manon of the Fountains), to her role as Bear, the love interest in the first Mission: Impossible film, she has produced more than 60 films and television shows at home. abroad, is a true French icon and a worthy recipient of the country's highest award — the title of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
So Bear's revelation in new documentary Such Loud Silence that she was a victim of incest between the ages of 10 and 14 is sure to shake her country to its core. The documentary, which she co-directed with Anastasia Mikova, features testimonies from five incest victims, including Bear. Although the actress did not name her abuser, saying that it was “not in the spirit of the film,” she clarified that it was not her father, singer and songwriter Guy Béart.
In the program “Such Sounding Silence” , which will air in France on September 24, Béart addresses his abuser in voiceover: “Since my father, my mother and my friends didn’t notice, you could do it again, and you did.” , more than four years.»
She was eventually saved by her grandmother, whom she called «the one who saved my skin.» She allowed me to escape from the clutches of this man. I was expelled from my family circle and sent to boarding school.”
Emmanuelle Beart, pictured earlier this year, spoke out about being a victim of incest. Photo: Sylvain Lefebvre/Getty Images
Bear did not attend the first press screening of the acclaimed documentary in Paris. Instead, she appeared in a video message in which she made it clear that her intention was not to steal the spotlight, but rather to share the stories of other incest victims. However, she said, “their honesty and courage made me want to speak out too.”
She went into more detail in an interview with Elle magazine, in which she said: “I am not a victim, and this film is not about victims, but about beings who have been victims and who are fighting… why, at this moment, are we coming out of the silence? But because it makes too much noise! Why are we silent, especially at first? Because we are afraid, because we are ashamed. Family silence, public silence, circles of silence! And by being silent ourselves, we perpetuate this silence, we participate in silence.”
The resulting film, which currently has no UK release date, will inevitably attract huge attention, but it could also shed light on some grim statistics regarding similar behavior in France. The government-created commission CIVIISE, which specializes in investigating and preventing these crimes, estimates that around 160,000 children are sexually abused each year, and that around 5.5 million French adults live with a legacy of treatment similar to that of Béart.
It is common knowledge that sexual violence affects all social classes equally, regardless of position or wealth, and Emmanuelle Beart grew up in one of the most privileged homes one could hope for. Her father, who shortened his name from his birth name Bear-Hasson, was one of the most successful chanson singer-songwriters in France in the 1950s; his most famous song, the title track to the film «L'Eau Vive», soon became a beloved standard and brought him fame and fortune. But his fame was soon eclipsed by the rise of rock star Johnny Hallyday, who was heavily influenced by the success of Elvis, and the much more ridiculous and dangerous Serge Gainsbourg.
Danielle Auteuil, Emmanuelle Beart and her father Guy in Paris, 1986. Photo: Getty
Emmanuelle was born in 1963. former model and second wife of Guy Genevieve Galea; three years laterGinsbourg achieved success withethe song Les Sucettes or Lollipops, an apparently innocent tune about anise-flavored lollipops, sung by a young France Gall, barely concealing a series of euphemisms for oral sex.
Bear made her film debut in 1972, playing a minor role as a child in the film Hope to Die, and four years later had a more substantial role in the film Tomorrow's Children; filmed, it now turns out, while she was being abused. Her first leading role was in the 1984 erotic coming-of-age drama First Wish, about three girls who discover their sexual awakening on a Mediterranean island after a shipwreck. The film was directed by photographer David Hamilton, who was later accused of sexual assault by several former models and, after denying the allegations and threatening legal action against his accusers, committed suicide in 2016.
It was a hot time in France when it came to highly sexualized works; In 1984, Gainsbourg recorded a duet with his daughter Charlotte, Lemon Incest, in which the video showed the two of them lying in bed half-naked. Even by the laissez-faire standards of a country that prided itself on tolerance and openness in matters of sex, it created enormous controversy, reminiscent of Gainsbourg's equally scandalous duet with his ex-wife Jane Birkin, Je t'aime… moi non plus fresh. Although Charlotte denied it was an incest song despite its title, saying that «it just talks about the endless love of a father for his daughter and a daughter for her father», the scandal secured her second place in the ranking. French graphics.
Emmanuelle Beart in 1984 Photo: Getty
It was in this febrile atmosphere that Bear's appearance in Manon of the Sources attracted enormous attention. Although she appeared nude in The First Wish, the film was relatively little seen, but Claude Berry's film was a huge box office success both domestically and internationally, and attracted interest both for its painterly, literary qualities and for its nude bathing scene. in which the then 23-year-old actress performed.
At first she didn’t want to do this scene, and the director had to persuade her by stripping naked and diving into the water. Still, it made her a star and cemented her reputation as an actress comfortable with on-screen nudity—something taken to the extreme in Jacques Rivette's nearly four-hour 1991 drama «Beautiful Buzz,» in which Bear played an artist's model. , is exposed on the screen in large areas of the image.
Soon after, Béart married her Manon of the Sources co-star Daniel Auteuil, an actor 13 years her senior, and appeared in the 1994 film L'Enfer (Hell), directed by the legendary Claude Chabrol, who later said of the actress that “Emmanuel has the face of a virgin and the body of a whore.” If she was offended by the description, she did not publicly criticize it, but noted in a 2007 Guardian interview that acting “isn’t really a mental profession. Sensuality and sexuality are very strong and very present in this work. My body is a tool that I can use.”
“This is just one of my faces” , she continued. “The public has the impression that I am very sexy, but that is not the whole picture. I played ugly women, broken women, who were not femme fatales or temptresses at all.”
In 2003, Bear posed nude for Elle magazine; The circulation of 550,000 copies was sold out in three days. She explained that this was not a provocation: “When I saw [the photographs], I was the one who suggested using them. It was a counterattack to all those skinny, semi-anorexic teenagers that women's magazines force on us; it was meant to say: “Look, I'm 40, this is my body, this is my fullness, these are my curves, I like them and I'm proud of them.” It's true, I feel better in my body now. than when I was 20. Why not?”
However, over the past decade, the actress has practically left cinema. She continues to act, most recently in the French crime television series Syndrome E, but has lost interest in objectification and the need to be complicit in her status as a licensed national object of lust. Her courage and candor in the new documentary will undoubtedly return her to the fame she tried to avoid. But it also comes at a time when issues of sexual violence are part of the national discourse in France.
Emmanuelle Béart in the 1999 film Time Regained Photo: Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
Camille Kouchner's book «Big Family,» published last year, sparked outrage as it detailed how her stepfather Olivier Duhamel, one of the country's foremost public intellectuals, sexually abused her twin brother. And writer Vanessa Springora wrote her own short story, «Consent,» in 2020, about being raped as a teenager by the much older writer Gabriel Matzneff, a man who once declared on television in 1990 that he had no interest in sleeping with women over 20 years of age. preferring “those who are not yet seasoned, who are still good.”
That France's permissive attitude towards sexuality has led to this tidal wave of abuse and assault may seem a difficult lesson to learn, but Emmanuel Macron publicly declared in 2021 that «we will prosecute the aggressors» and that issues of consent and coercion, even incest will be subject to significantly more severe persecution than before.
Many people cannot speak up openly for fear that they will not be believed; As Bear told Elle magazine when asked why she didn't report her abuser sooner, “I couldn't bear the risk of being told it didn't happen. Having a case like this dismissed is a terrifying prospect, and that's what happens to three-quarters of people who make a complaint.»
Her entry into this dark but necessary conversation may be a far cry from the sexualized image her (almost exclusively male) directors chose to offer the world when she was younger. However, by choosing this opportune moment to speak out about the abuse she suffered, Bear, a fantasy object turned real-life campaigner, gives impetus to a movement that cannot and should no longer be ignored.
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