Feminist anger over French ‘Oscar’ for director Polanski
France’s equivalent of the Oscars has fuelled feminist fury against Roman Polanski after the controversial director’s film An Officer and a Spy topped this year’s nominations.
The critically acclaimed 86-year-old has been a fugitive from American justice since admitting to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
Last November, Valentine
Monnier, a French photographer, claimed Polanski raped her in 1975 when she was 18 after beating her ‘‘into submission’’ at his Swiss chalet. He ‘‘absolutely denied’’ assaulting her, telling Paris Match magazine: ‘‘Obviously, I have no memory of it because it is false.’’
Yesterday, his period drama about an anti-Semitism case that rocked France was nominated for 12 Cesars, the ‘‘French Oscars’’.
Feminists and some film critics denounced the nominations. ‘‘If rape was an art, give all the Cesars to Polanski,’’ Osez le Feminisme (Dare to be Feminist), the French women’s group, wrote on Twitter. The group said it would demonstrate outside the awards ceremony on Feb 28.
It comes in the wake of allegations of abuse made by Adele Haenel, who has been nominated for best actress for her performance in Portrait of a Lady on Fire. She rocked the film establishment last year by claiming
she was sexually harassed from the age of 12 on her first film. Christophe Ruggia, the French director, was charged with sexual assault on a minor earlier this month. He denies any wrongdoing.
❏ Gabriel Matzneff, 83, the French author and essayist, has for the first time expressed ‘‘regrets’’ about taking trips to Asia to have sex with children, claiming that back then, ‘‘no one ever said it was a crime’’.
– Telegraph Group