Former IMF supremo Dominique Strauss-Kahn has injected some real-life drama into the Cannes Film Festival with his announcement that he will sue the producers of Welcome to New York, a film about an economist charged with raping a hotel maid.
The economist in the film is called Mr Devereaux and is played by Gerard Depardieu, who could hardly look less like Strauss-Kahn, but the film follows the story of his arrest, the eventual withdrawal of criminal charges and the subsequent eruption of allegations from other women almost exactly. Speaking on French radio, Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer Jean Veil said his client had been left “heartbroken and terrified” by the film and went on to describe it as “a shit, a turd”. He said they would sue for defamation.
American maverick Abel Ferrara has made no secret of the fact that his film, which includes two orgy scenes featuring a strikingly naked Depardieu, and the central rape in the first 20 minutes, is based on Strauss-Kahn’s case. “I’m not on trial,” he said in Cannes after the film was given a private screening to journalists. “I’m an artist. I have freedom of speech. I’m from America, I’m from the country of the free, land of the free and home of the brave.”
Dominique Strauss-Kahn is not on trial either; the criminal charges were withdrawn and a civil suit settled out of court three years ago. The lingering scandal nevertheless put paid to the general expectation that he would run for the French presidency on the Socialist Party ticket, especially given the seemingly endless stream of testimonies and anecdotes about his alleged sexual excesses that followed the failed criminal charge.
It also led to a temporary separation from his wife Anne Sinclair, a celebrated French television interviewer regarded as a local feminist icon. Their subsequent reunion has provided source material for innumerable columns expressing frustration at Sinclair’s old-fashioned loyalty. Much of Welcome to New York’s punch comes from the imagined confrontations behind closed doors between the fictional Devereaux and his wife, played by Jacqueline Bisset.
Astonishingly, they were able to shoot in the real Manhattan house where Strauss Kahn lived under house arrest after he was granted bail.
