I am ashamed to announce that I didn’t notice Adèle Haenel has been missing from our screens since 2019–the year she starred in the lesbian masterpiece Portrait of a Lady on Fire, as well as Deerskin and Heroes Don’t Die. It wasn’t until I read that she has quit the film industry that I thought “wait, where has she been?”
I’d even reported on her walking out of the 2020 César Awards when paedophile and rapist Roman Polanski won Best Director over Céline Sciamma and when she, along with Sciamma, advocated for France to have a legal age of consent – which was finally achieved in 2021. Foucault would be turning in his grave (hehe).
How could I ignore that the wild-eyed, fiery fellow Aquarius wasn’t on our screens? Well, the French actress has a unique vibe that suits underground, avant-garde pieces I’d never hear of, let alone watch, so that was a possibility. Then there was COVID. I could only assume that actresses weren’t immune from pandemic unemployment.
I was wrong. In fact, she recently quit Bruno Dumont’s forthcoming sci-fi feature. “At first, I thought it looked like a lot of fun: a kind of Luke Skywalker in space,” Haenel said, according to The Film Stage, about leaving the project. “The problem is that behind this funny facade, it was a dark, sexist and racist world that was defended.”
“The script was full of jokes about cancel culture and sexual violence. I tried to discuss it with Dumont, because I thought a dialogue was possible. I wanted to believe for the umpteenth time that it was not intentional. But it’s intentional. This disregard is deliberate. Just as they make fun of the victims, of people in a situation of weakness. The intention was to make a sci-fi film with an all-white cast – and therefore a racist narrative. I didn’t want to support this.”
As for her relationship with the film industry, she has filed for divorce. “I don’t make films anymore,” said Haenel in a new interview with the German magazine FAQ. When asked why, she added, “Because of political reasons. Because the film industry is absolutely reactionary, racist, and patriarchal.”
“We are mistaken if we say that the powerful are of goodwill, that the world is indeed moving in the right direction under their good and sometimes unskillful management. Not at all. The only thing that moves society structurally is social struggle. And it seems to me that in my case, to leave is to fight. By leaving this industry for good, I want to take part in another world, in another cinema.”
“For example, the perspective of women in the films,” Haenel added. “I tried to change something from within. When it comes to the MeToo movement, women’s issues or racism, the film industry is extremely problematic. I don’t want to be part of that anymore.”
What are her future plans? While she’ll be focusing on performing in theatre for now, she isn’t ruling out working in films that involve fellow activists Gisèle Vienne and Céline Sciamma. “I want to participate in another world,” she said. “If I stayed today in this film industry, I would be a kind of feminist guarantee to this masculine and patriarchal industry. My dream is to make it clear: this industry defends a capitalist, patriarchal, racist, sexist world of structural inequality. This means that this industry works hand in hand with the global economic order, in which all lives are not equal.”
“I don’t want to be part of a feminist washing machine. It’s bullshit,” she added. “The director of the CNC, the French organization for the promotion of cinema, Dominique Boutonnat, remains in office while he is indicted for sexual assault. But Thierry Frémaux, from the Cannes Film Festival, puts three women in the 2022 Official Selection, so I am told that this is going in the right direction? In the sense of being had, yes!”
