film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,12589,1627442,00.html?gusrc=rss
The Guardian An acclaimed French film director credited with discovering Vanessa Parad is appeared in a Paris court yesterday accused by four young actresses o f forcing them to masturbate as part of their screen tests. Jean-Claude Brisseau denies the charges of sexual harassment and sexual a ssault, insisting in newspaper interviews that the "erotic auditions", h eld between 1996 and 2001 for his 2002 feature Choses Secrtes, were jus tified artistically and "indispensable" to his work. Mr Brisseau, 61, who cast a teenage Paradis, who is married to Johnny Dep p, in his 1989 film Noce Blanche, has twice won awards at Cannes and bee n nominated for the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival.
Advertisement But the four actresses, two of whom allege the director also tricked them into working for him for nothing, say he abused his authority to gain s exual favours. One told the court Mr Brisseau often asked her to masturb ate in front of him, sometimes in public places. She said she did 20 or 30 such "tests" between 1996 and 2001, some of them with another young h opeful. "He said it was good to improvise all these things now, so as not to waste time on the set. A nd he said his eye was replacing the camera," she said. A lawyer for two of the women, Claire Doubliez, said outside court her cl ients were afraid "because they have broken the law of silence, and beca use it may look like they are complaining because they didn't get big pa rts. They want the court to acknowledge that they were manipulated and s ullied, that they are not idiots." The investigating magistrate's report said the number of auditions, the f act they took place over several years, the conditions in which they wer e done and the fact Mr Brisseau masturbated in front of the actresses "e xcludes all artistic or cinematographic motive". that Mr Brisseau was seeking simply to satisfy his pe rsonal pleasure." Franois Blistene, Mr Brisseau's lawyer, said his client admitted doing a number of "short tests" with the women in hotel rooms, restaurants, a c inema and at his and the women's homes. But, he said, Mr Brisseau "vehem ently denied" all charges against him. In an interview with Libration earlier this year the director said his i dea of cinema was "to use sexual feelings in the same way that Hitchcock used fears". He added: "These erotic auditions are indispensable: I can work on the style and the acting before we film. They allow me to find out qualities and problems with their bodies and their acting."
|
http://csua.com/feed/