28/02/2006

The law will separate and define the limits between fact and fiction in cinema in the case between actress Marianne Denicourt and her former partner, director Arnaud Desplechin. Denicourt is accusing him of having used elements of their private life to create the highly antipathetic character played by Emmanuelle Devos in the film King and Queen [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

Denounced last year by the actress, in her book Mauvais génie (lit. “Bad Genius”), the various events “borrowed” by Desplechin (the death of Denicourt’s father and also of the father of her son...) have once more been laid out in public, this time in court (the in Paris).

To help unravel this story of personal vengeance and artistic creation, another famous French actor, Daniel Auteuil, offered written testimony, estimating that an artist breaks the boundaries of artistic freedom, in an abusive manner, when the work is made "only to demolish peoples’ lives". The judge will give his verdict on April 3, and the decision will be carefully evaluated since the Denicourt-Desplechin case is the tip of the iceberg in a growing phenomenon of "name-dropping" that pervades literature and is now manifesting itself in cinema.

Recourse to the law is now growing more popular in the seventh art, with, for example, the teacher featured in To Be and To Have, who claimed he had not been adequately remunerated, and the actresses who claimed they were manipulated at castings by filmmaker Jean-Claude Brisseau. Though these two cases were dismissed in favour of the defendants, they bear witness to a tendency that could influence the screenplay writing.

(Translated from French)