French actress Judith Godreche accuses second director of sex abuse

This combination photo created on Feb./ 7, 2024, shows French filmaker Jacques Doillon (left) posing during a photo call for the film “CE2” during the 14th Francophone film festival in Angouleme, on Aug. 25, 2021, and French actress Judith Godreche posing during the 49th edition of the American Film Festival in Deauville, northwestern France on Sept. 3, 2023. On Feb. 8, 2024, Godreche questioned director Doillon’s behavior toward her when he was directing her at the age of 15, the day after the announcement of an investigation against another director she accuses, Benoit Jacquot. YOHAN BONNET, LOU BENOIST / AFP)

PARIS—French actor Judith Godreche Thursday, Feb. 8, accused director Jacques Doillon of sexually abusing her when she was 15, the second such charge she has made after alleging another director raped her while she was a minor.

French prosecutors opened a probe this week after Godreche, now 51, accused filmmaker Benoit Jacquot of raping her during a six-year-long relationship that started when she was 14 and he was 25 years her senior.

Doillon took advantage of her while directing her in one of his films when she was 15, she alleged on Thursday. He was 29 years older at the time.

Neither Doillon, 79, nor Jacquot, 77, replied to a request from AFP for comment. Jacquot has firmly rejected the allegations against him in Le Monde newspaper.

In Doillon’s 1989 film “La fille de 15 ans” (“The 15-year-old girl”), Godreche played a teenager whose boyfriend’s father falls in love with her.

Doillon had hired an actor to play the father, but at the start of the film shoot “he fired him and took his place,” she told the France Inter radio broadcaster.

“All of a sudden, he decides there will be a love scene, a sex scene between him and me,” she said.

“And we do 45 takes. I take off my jumper, I’m bare chested, he’s fondling me and French kissing me.”

Asked by France Inter if she was abused by the director, she agreed.

Doillon was in a relationship with British actress and singer Jane Birkin at the time, after she had left singer Serge Gainsbourg, and she was on set as an assistant.

“What happened in Jane’s house, in Doillon’s office, nobody saw and I didn’t tell anyone,” Godreche said, without elaborating.

“But then on set, that was unbelievable,” she said of the sex scene and the fact that no adult present stood up for her.

“Jane is there behind the monitor and it’s an extremely painful situation for her,” she added.

Birkin, who died last year, mentioned the incident in her 2019 memoir “Post-Scriptum.”

“He’d kiss Judith Godreche 20 times in a row asking me what the best take was. A real agony,” she wrote.

Godreche’s lawyer Laure Heinich said the actress had filed a complaint against both directors this week.

A source close to the case told AFP that the probe, which opened on Wednesday to examine her complaint against Jacquot, would also investigate her allegations against Doillon.

French cinema has been rocked by allegations it has shrugged off sexism and sexual abuse for decades, and criticism that the arts have too long provided cover for abuse.

Newly released footage of film star Gerard Depardieu making obscene comments sparked an uproar in December. That intensified after President Emmanuel Macron said the actor had become the target of a “manhunt.”