It all started with a cry from the heart.
In an Instagram post published on May 12, 2023, Vahina Giocante defends Adèle Haenel, castigated for her decision to leave the world of cinema.
The latter accuses the director Christophe Ruggia of having behaved inappropriately towards her when she was 12 years old, and denounces the “general complacency of the profession towards sexual attackers”.
An approach welcomed by Vahina Giocante: “If now his decision is to withdraw into silence, then my duty and the duty of all of us is to start speaking, to take over without shame, fear or reproach,” writes -her at the time.
Before adding: “Like her and like so many others, I was sexually abused as a child, except that it was by my father.”
In her book
À corps Ouvert
(1), to be published this Thursday, March 28 by Robert Laffont, Vahina Giocante recounts the incest experienced in her young years.
But also the violence she faced in the world of cinema.
We meet her in a hotel in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris, on a rainy March afternoon.
The actress weighs her words to express the unspeakable, from her father's repeated abuse to her slow healing process.
“I devoted my life to my reconstruction,” she slips.
I wrote this book because today I no longer carry the burden of anger.”
There remains the need to free speech, echoed by this sentence from his book: “What if this was the moment for transparency, sharing and courage?”
Also read “I’m counting on you to protect children”: in video, Judith Godrèche’s poignant speech to the National Assembly
“The entry into incest was gradual”
In “Open Body”, Vahina Giocante relates the incest perpetrated by her father, and the consequences of the latter.
Robert Laffont
Madame Figaro. -
When and how did the abuse that you describe in the book begin?
Vahina Giocante.
-
They lasted from when I was 4.5 years old to when I was 10.11 years old.
This abuse began as moments of tenderness – a tenderness that rocks.
In my case, the entry into incest was gradual, gentle.
There was no awareness of anything violent.
How can we understand the explosion of an act that is neither painful nor violent?
Vahina Giocante
You explain in fact that this incest is all the more insidious because it is not accompanied by any blows, because it is mixed with love and delicacy...
This is not the image we have. constitutes an assault in the sense that there was no violence or physical pain.
And that’s the most pernicious thing.
How can we understand the explosion of an act that is neither painful nor violent?
Yet it is, very deeply.
This is where prevention is essential.
We must speak to children in simple words, explaining to them the limits that must not be crossed.
The more we abolish this taboo, the more we will give them the keys to understanding.
In the book, you address children who have experienced incest. What message do you want to send to them?
I would like to tell them that reconstruction is possible.
We hear a lot that incest is a wound that we carry for life.
This is not necessarily the case.
The problem is collective denial.
However, to heal, recognition is essential.
We cannot heal a wound if it is not identified and accepted by others.
It becomes infected with silence.
It eats you from the inside.
It can even kill you.
That's why we have to burst the abscess.
Afterwards, it is only time, gentleness and self-love that help you heal.
One sentence speaks to me a lot: “An abused child does not stop loving his parents, he stops loving himself.”
We have to learn to love ourselves again.
But healing is possible.
There is life after survival.
The “puppets of evil”
In
À Corps Ouvert
, you also address those who perpetrate incest…
I call them the “puppets of evil”.
I think they are sick people.
They probably experienced these wounds of shame.
But we rarely hear their explanations.
I never had the “why” with my father.
Now, he interests me.
I need to understand, because I tell myself that we can help these people to transform themselves, to understand the impact that abuse can have on others, to prevent it from being perpetrated.
I had to kill the hero of my very young years
Vahina Giocante
You describe your father as "a kind of remarkable predator whose charisma is matched only by his narcissism." How has your perception of it evolved?
It evolved as I healed.
First there was a notion of trust.
Your father is your reference.
The one who is supposed to protect you from the violence of the world.
I had to kill the hero of my very young years.
I see him today as a sick man.
In your opinion, what fuels the silence of victims, and how can we break it?
Fear, guilt, shame... What we can do to break the silence is to provide a safe space, for sincere listening, for curiosity about others.
We must let the victim go at their own pace in their process of integration and liberation of this word.
Reach out and listen.
Offer to listen without trying to project.
As soon as I felt the person I was talking to angry, hateful or judgmental towards my father, it blocked me.
It's important to feel kindness and gentleness.
Because, when we are abused, we are in such a degree of suffering that we can react with violence, aggression, anger.
A bit like a wounded animal.
Unfortunately, society, for the moment, does not provide this gentleness and attentiveness to children.
The trial
And you, what led you to break the silence?
I did it to protect my sisters.
I didn't necessarily have a choice.
But at the same time, I tried to bring gentleness to my sister, precisely, so that she could confide in herself about the incest that she also experienced at the hands of our father.
My father was in a survival mechanism, even if it meant destroying me
Vahina Giocante
You filed a complaint against him at the age of 17, but you wanted to tell him beforehand. For what ?
It was important for me to confront him, to try to understand, before the trial.
I needed him to know.
Maybe he's preparing for it too.
You never know what will happen when the judicial machine starts up.
But I knew the consequences would be significant.
That nothing would ever be the same again.
And then, maybe I needed to protect him.
I have always had this need to protect others.
Protection is what I missed.
Providing one to others gave me an illusion of control.
Your father was ultimately sentenced to three years in prison, one of which was suspended, with the withdrawal of his family rights and the annulment of his parental “authority”. How did you experience his trial?
The confrontation was extremely violent.
We had to mourn the image of the father.
It was a kind of struggle, but I didn't experience it as such.
I never wanted to harm him, only to put him out of harm's way.
He tried to save his skin.
He was in a survival mechanism, even if it meant destroying me.
We don't know what can happen in the psyche at that moment, how far we are ready to go to protect ourselves.
I felt immense sadness, a real sense of total loss.
That of the foundations, of the family, of reality as I knew it, of the illusion that he would recognize the facts in front of the judge.
How was the reunion with your father, years after the trial?
They were surprisingly bright.
We hadn't seen each other for 14 years.
He used words that I didn't expect, and which made me feel good at the time.
He said to me: “Thank you for agreeing to see me again, I ask you for forgiveness, and I have never stopped loving you.”
I forgave him at the time, but there was a rebuilding on shaky ground.
Because it was not an accepted truth until the end.
My father was willing to admit his mistake to me, but not to others.
He didn't want it to tarnish his image.
He therefore played on two counts.
On the one hand, he was extremely sincere and vulnerable with me.
On the other hand, he was manipulative, or at least in denial, with my siblings, my family and his friends.
I later learned that he had used my forgiveness to assert: “If she forgave me, it’s because what she’s saying didn’t happen.”
I experienced it as a betrayal.
And there, it really generated rage.
Shame and anger
How did you deal with this anger?
It is a very uncomfortable and violent emotion for those who live around us.
At the same time, it is an incompressible path.
It's a bit like a grieving process.
Collectively, we are facing anger that is being expressed.
The more we welcome it, the more we will make something beautiful out of it.
It is not necessarily hideous, it is healthy.
It’s about looking it in the face, channeling it and transforming it.
Great struggles have been fought with the force of anger.
You also talk about the weight of shame and guilt, which grows over the years. How do they manifest themselves, and how did you break away from them?
We especially don't want people to identify us as an abused child.
We feel like everything is our fault.
We feel the shame of not having been able to protect ourselves.
Shame is also encouraged by taboo.
When we feel the discomfort of the person in front of us during our story, it is unbearable.
This is why I testify in these words, with my face uncovered.
I want to show these 160,000 children (
the number of children victims of sexual violence each year, according to a
CIIVISE
report
, editor's note ), who live in this dungeon of shame, that we can speak without feeling dirty and while remaining dignified.
As an actress, my body was displayed for all to see, it was a utensil, sometimes an object of fantasies
Vahina Giocante
Your book is called
Open Body
.
How has your relationship with your body evolved over the years?
Vahina Giocante.
-
In my book, I dissect incest, but also its impact.
The damage it causes passes through the body.
We are as if dispossessed of a part of ourselves, of our physical integrity, of our sexuality, of our desire.
It was quite a journey to love this body again, each of its soiled parts.
To reclaim it.
What impact has your story had on your romantic relationships?
It inevitably impacted my trust in others.
Until the trauma is released, we relive things over and over again.
When I talk about reclaiming one's body, it's paradoxical, because at the same time I was an actress.
My body was displayed for all to see, it was a utensil, sometimes an object of fantasy, used to convey emotions.
Cinema, an “incestuous family”
You also talk about the violence to which you were exposed in the cinema industry. Could you come back to this episode which made you want to move away from this profession in 2015?
During the filming of a series,
Mata Hari,
a producer said to me: “Okay, you have to give everything, you have to get hard in your underwear.”
This sentence hit me like a bomb.
I said to myself: “But if I give everything for the sole purpose of getting a man to get an erection, I have failed my life.
If that’s what giving everything is, I have nothing left to give.”
It was an incredible trigger.
At that moment, I erased all forms of femininity and I moved 10,000 km away, to a place where no one expected anything from me, to the United States.
Benoît Jacquot established a relationship of domination and misplaced seduction
Vahina Giocante
You also mention an incident that occurred on the set of
No Scandal
(1998), with Benoît Jacquot…
I say that he wanted to make me take off my panties for a scene.
I was 17, he was 51. This request was not justified and I refused it.
I went to put on flesh colored panties.
He felt like he was winning.
It was a relationship of domination and misplaced seduction.
When I started my book, I had already written this chapter, without naming Benoît Jacquot.
When Judith Godrèche spoke, I understood that he could take her to court for defamation.
I wanted to support her by exhibiting her too.
Judith Godrèche's speech is necessary and powerful.
What I find quite incredible is that we witness his awakening of conscience throughout his speeches.
As if she was waking up from a long coma.
She herself becomes aware of the incestuous side of this environment.
Because yes, cinema is a little incestuous family.
New world
During the César ceremony, his speech was greeted by a standing ovation. Do you think that the French cinema world has really started to change?
We still encounter resistance.
And a very noisy silence.
We would like to hear about men, we would like to feel that we are not all alone.
But it will come, we have no choice.
We are in the process of changing paradigm.
Cinema is a reflection of life, of society.
We are somewhat obliged to keep up with the world.
We cannot stick to our old achievements.
But the world of cinema is made up of several components.
There is power, money and ego.
It's a terrifying combo, open to abuse.
In the world of cinema, we still encounter resistance
Vahina Giocante
Today, intimacy coordinators are present on many film sets. What do you think of this initiative?
I find it wonderful.
The acting profession is the only one in which our superior can ask us to simulate a sexual act or to get naked.
Someone needs to make sure that boundaries and consent are respected.
It is a sort of safeguard so that it is not a space of freedom going against the safety and well-being of actresses, actors or technicians.
You also revealed that you had witnessed attacks on the part of Gérard Depardieu (
she filmed three times with him, notably in
Turf
, in 2013, Editor's note
) towards certain people on the teams.
How did you react when you learned of the existence of the various testimonies and the complaints filed against him?
I support all these women and the complainants who have the courage to talk about what they experienced.
I cannot speak on their behalf.
But I give them my total support for what I have seen and what they are going through.
How do you make your son Nino, 23, aware of this type of violence? And how did you tell him your story?
I told it to him quite early on, when he asked me why he didn't see his grandfather.
I spoke about it in very simple words.
He also read the book, which moved him.
He is very grateful to be able to understand his story and mine.
Because my story is also his, by extension.
He asks himself questions, because he is a young person in this society, between two worlds, two eras.
He must awaken to all these questions, and integrate them into his reality.
Your book is dedicated to your father, and ends with a letter in which you express your love for him. Why ?
It is a choice that can question, even shock.
I did this for several reasons.
The first is that without my father, there would have been neither this book nor this trauma.
It's a way of giving him responsibility for this story.
But also to keep only the most important: forgiveness and love.
Why do I grant my forgiveness?
To no longer give it negative power over my life.
It is almost the last step to achieve liberation.
Regarding love, this is what I explained previously: a child does not stop loving his parents, he stops loving himself.
Today, I have finally come to a place where I love myself enough to express my love freely.
(1)
Open body
, by Vahina Giocante, published March 28, 2024, Ed.
Robert Laffont, 288 p., €20