Consent in the movies: What did author Vanessa Springora think about it?

Hitting our screens on Wednesday 11 October, Le Consentement is Vanessa Philo’s second feature, following Gueule d’ange, directed by Marion Cotillard in 2018. But it’s also a shocking book by Vanessa Springora. and published in January 2020.

A story depicting her controlling relationship with writer Gabriel Matznef, then 50, when she was only 14. This is especially true of pedophilia, but also of the re-appropriation of history. his. Which sounds even more today, when the author commissioned the director to translate this part of his life into pictures.

Three years after hitting bookstores, Le Consentement is being told in a movie, starring Jean-Paul Rouvaux and Kim Higuelin. But the adaptation process, in which Vanessa Springora collaborated, was not easy: “I hesitated a lot because it was very difficult – even very dangerous”Announces the writer on the set daily.

“There were many flaws in the possible adaptation of this text. Because showing this relationship can also give the impression of romance. In fact, it is difficult to see people without showing, obviously, and without giving an idyllic image of either. It’s kind of scary. Even without a foil.”

“You have to find the right balance, and that’s what Vanessa Philo did very well, but I was very hesitant at first because I didn’t write this book with the idea that you could paint it as a painting. Because I know that imagery is much more direct, much more brutal. , to some extent.”

“And it took a director like Vanessa Filho all the delicacy to compensate for exactly this violence, which is no longer mediated by words, but by images. There is a side where we face it. That’s a little. uppercut”.

It took all the delicacy of a director like Vanessa Filo to compensate for exactly this violence, which is no longer mediated by words, but by images.

“At the same time, I think it’s very important that the book becomes images, and it exists in this form, because I find that we see violence even better. Cinema brings bodies, images into the game. , all sensations. It’s total art, so we see much more of the aberration, the anomaly that was the story.”

“Watching the film was obviously very difficult. First of all, there’s a slightly schizophrenic side to seeing your own life portrayed in the picture. And, at the same time, there’s also a separation, because ‘It’s me, but it’s not me, and above all, it’s that today this story becomes everyone’s history”.

“I think a lot of people will recognize themselves in this film. Unfortunately, because I’m far from someone who has experienced this kind of history and the figures say so. But what I think is very important is that today this story reaches a wider audience.”

“That it affects young people as well, perhaps those who were unaware of this violence when they read the book, and who, through the power of the image, may also be brought back to their point of view. And then I was lucky. To have that meeting with Vanessa Filho and to have actors who interpreted that story and who blew me away.”

“consent” by Vanessa Springora is still available from Grasset Editions. And Vanessa Philo’s film adaptation of it is a must-see in theaters by now.