Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: Consent

Until 2021, France did not have a set legal age of consent. Then Vanessa Springora wrote Le Consentement in 2020, an autobiographical memoir about her experience being groomed and abused by the famed author Gabriel Matzneff for two long years. She was just 14 when the abuse began; he was 49. He was also a known pedophile, having written about it in his books for decades. The following is a sentence from the memoir Matzneff published in 1985, a sentence that makes one wonder about the extent of depravity in the elite French circles that defend(ed) Matzneff: “Sometimes, I’ll have as many as four boys — from 8 to 14 years old — in my bed at the same time, and I’ll engage in the most exquisite lovemaking with them.” Again, that line comes from a memoir… not a fictional novel. Springora’s book at last inspired a change to the French legal system, implementing an age of consent at 15.

Another Vanessa, Consent‘s director Vanessa Filho (Angel Face), here adapts Springora’s memoir to the film medium. “Lolita from her perspective” could work as a tagline for the film, though maybe that minimizes its non-fiction elements. Nevertheless, Consent is told entirely from Vanessa’s perspective, played by 23-year-old Kim Higelin, who is best known for her work as the daughter in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. Filho’s most consequential directorial decision involves vanquishing the double vision of the past and present in Springora’s book; instead of the groomed “real-time” reflections of her past being apotheosized alongside present reflections from adulthood, the film moves chronologically and leaves the bold act of revelation and declarative revulsion for the end.

Continue reading at In Review Online.