For many, he represents the nation’s cultural presence. But he is also a cause célèbre for those frightened by #MeToo and progressive change
I remember the moment my Scottish flatmate showed me a clip of Gérard Depardieu in Le Camion by Marguerite Duras from 1977, proof of his youthful attractiveness. As a woman born in France in the 1980s, my recent memory pictured him as a more imposing figure, someone prone to débordements in the sense of excess – a national treasure: a symbol of a certain Rabelaisian laisser-aller, an overindulgence of man’s appetites.
I won’t lie and say that the latest Depardieu controversy – the accusations of past rape and sexual assault – came as a shock in my parents’ home north of Paris, where I am spending the quiet days between Christmas and new year.
Elsa Court is a lecturer in French at the University of Oxford
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