On May 13, 2025, Gérard Depardieu was sentenced by a Paris criminal court to 18 months' probation for sexually assaulting two women during a film shoot in the summer of 2021. He was also placed on the sex offenders register. (Reading Anouk Grinberg's book) Respect is inextricably linked to this process; the actress has also spoken publicly about it several times during the negotiations.
Actor Depardieu appeared contradictory, evasive, and unconvinced during the trial. His statements changed repeatedly, and he attempted to portray the assaults as professional misunderstandings. He showed no remorse; instead, he railed against the fallout from #MeToo and complained about female protesters before his performances. His lawyer, Jérémie Assous, defended him, according to the court. The Point He acted aggressively and questioned the credibility of the victims – including through a personal attack on Charlotte Arnould, who filed a rape complaint against Depardieu in 2018. The prosecution had demanded not only a suspended sentence but also a fine, psychological treatment, a two-year ban on holding public office, and compensation for the victims. Ultimately, the trial reflected a system of long-standing impunity in which Depardieu, as a powerful star, seemed untouchable. Numerous witness testimonies painted a picture of a man who disregarded social and professional boundaries – and whom no one challenged.
Anouk Grinberg's autobiographical work Respect The book confronts readers with a childhood marked by violence, neglect, and the systematic destruction of the self. In this text, childhood is not only a theme but also the origin and motivation of the literary movement itself. Grinberg goes beyond a mere depiction of suffering: she examines the mechanisms of silence, shame, and survival. Against this backdrop, the book should first and foremost be read as a committed public intervention, not as a detached literary reflection.
Jérôme Lefilliâtre comments somewhat wearily on the fact that we are currently presented with so many similar accounts: “It’s easy to open this book with a certain weariness—yet another account from an actress revealing her private life; yet another account from an actress recounting the violence she faced in her profession. In the last two years, this practice has almost become a genre in its own right. Nevertheless, Anouk Grinberg’s writing style in Respect The reader is quickly captivated by his resolute simplicity, his way of avoiding precautions and detours, and his will to get straight to the heart of “evil” – a term already mentioned in the second line of the book.” 1 In the ongoing press reports about the sexual assault charges against Gérard Depardieu, the presence of Anouk Grinberg, who until recently filmed with him, is repeatedly emphasized. According to reports, Anouk Grinberg is breaking down. Nouvel Observateur With her book, she breaks decades of silence about the sexualized violence she has suffered since childhood. The starting point for her public speaking out was her support of actress Charlotte Arnould in the Depardieu case, which ultimately led Grinberg to confront her own story. 2
In another detailed interview 3 Grinberg also describes the psychological and pharmacological abuse she suffered at the hands of her former partner, director Bertrand Blier, who forced her to take neuroleptics for years to control and "neutralize" her, particularly because she refused to act in his film. According to her, the abuse she experienced led to profound shame, self-doubt, and problems with her later sexuality, which she long concealed by outwardly portraying herself as a "liberated" woman. In the interview, Grinberg says that theater and literature offered her a lifeline, a way to temporarily detach herself from her story and find a space for appreciation and creativity. The global movement and the new discourse surrounding abuse, Grinberg says, finally gave her the strength to go public with her experiences and break free from decades of isolation.
Certain elements of Grinberg's narrative are autofictional, such as her dense, literary imagery. She describes her traumas not only in documentary terms, but also in highly artificial, poetic images (e.g., "la pierre," "le dragon de calme," "des cafards dans mes veines," "mon heliport intérieur"). This translation of psychological states into symbolic imagery creates a distance from mere autobiographical account. Grinberg remains within the "true story," but she shapes the language and the representation so artistically that elements of autofiction emerge. Her text thus stands on the threshold: between document and artwork, between testimony and invention—which, incidentally, is typical of modern forms of autobiographical writing after 1970 (cf. Annie Ernaux, Christine Angot, Édouard Louis).
Grinberg's portrayal of childhood shatters the widespread notion of childhood as an untouched space. In Respect Childhood is a geographical and psychological territory of abuse. This violence does not appear as a singular event, but as a chain, a continuum of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. The first sexual abuse by the stepfather ("le second papa")—a man to whom the narrator feels childlike affection—is recounted in meticulous detail: the brutality of the physical intrusion is described as well as the psychological paralysis of the child, who is unable to scream or defend herself.
Later, further boundary violations follow: incest by the brother, abuse by adults in various positions of power (family friends, teachers, employers). Grinberg's text insists that the abuse is not an exception, but rather an integral part of a societal structure that fails to protect children. Particularly striking is the normalization of the violence: the father reacts to the revelation of the abuse by gently holding the child's hand and sharing a whisky with the perpetrator. This scene demonstrates the extent to which the adult world not only fails, but also protects the perpetrators and isolates the victims. This normalization intensifies the trauma and makes it even harder to find words to describe it.
It is possible to compare the violence of the men to the part of the woman, and to the part that I want to live again, even though I am alone, the portais beau, the ravalais la douleur en me disant que ce n'en était pas. Je n'étais pas outillée pour me protéger, je ne savais pas qu'on le pouvait, je ne savais rien du respect qu'on se doit, qu'on nous doit, on ne m'avait pas appris à dire non. On ne m'avait pas secourue, preuve sans doute que je n'existais pas.
There is no support for my vitality. Elle devenait malade de m'entendre pleurer, rire ou courir, donc je ne riais plus, je ne courais plus, j'avais un mors aux dents, je m'empêchais de tout sous peine d'être coupable du pire. La vie tordue avait tordu mon âme. Je ravalais mes pensées, je ravalais mes peines. J'avais tellement appris à ne pas déranger, pas dire Je que je ne savais plus qui j'étais. Son malheur était une marée blackire et je buvais des vagues de pétrole. Je ne voyais pas comment échapper à la Folie, drinking en mourant, mais elle Salissait même la mort en ratant ses suicides, alors je restais ; The child's ravage is not a cause of violence.
Anouk Grinberg, Respect, Julliard, 2025.
I understood that male violence would be a part of my life, and because I wanted to be alive, not a wreck like my mother, I wore my clothes, swallowed the pain, and told myself it wasn't pain. I didn't have the tools to protect myself; I didn't know that was possible. I knew nothing about the respect you owe yourself and others. I hadn't been taught to say no. I hadn't been rescued, which was undoubtedly proof that I didn't exist.
My mother couldn't bear my vitality. She became ill whenever she heard me cry, laugh, or run, so I stopped laughing, stopped running, got dentures, and kept away from everything, because otherwise I would do the worst things to myself. Twisted life had twisted my soul. I swallowed my thoughts, I swallowed my sorrow. I had learned so much not to disturb, not to speak, that I no longer knew who I was. Her misfortune was an oil spill, and I drank the waves of oil. I saw no way to escape the madness except through death, but she even defiled death by missing her suicides, so I remained; the devastated childhood makes no noise.
Grinberg's narrative technique is not documentary in a detached manner, but rather highly performative: the text itself becomes an act of resistance against silence, a work on memory. She employs various means to make the unspeakable speakable: meticulously detailed sensory impressions, fragmentation, repetition, paradoxes. Bodily sensations (pain, numbness, shame) are described in dense, intense images that often depict the effects on the body and consciousness rather than a chronological plot. The narrative structure is fragile, disjointed. Memories are not evoked linearly, but rather in a shock-like manner, often interrupted by digressions, reflections, or associative images. This fragmentation reflects the shattering of the child's self and the traumatic memory. Certain motifs recur (e.g., "pierre"—the petrification of the body; "silence"—the inability to speak), demonstrating the persistence of the trauma over time. Grinberg describes, on the one hand, the need for closeness and love, and on the other, the deadly threat emanating from adults. This tension remains unresolved in the text and points to the deep-seated ambivalence in the experience of the child's world. The act of writing thus becomes part of the healing process: naming what has been experienced is an act of resistance against decades of silence.
Respect The text analyzes the forms of communication that enable the abuse: Neither the father nor the mother (lost in their alcoholism and illness) provide information or protection. Silence becomes part of the system: a tacit consent to the violence. The text itself only offers hints as to how the brother, father, and mother react, or might react, to the disclosure of this story.
The beloved brother remains a significant figure in a world devoid of support, thus the incestuous experience between them remains unspoken. He therefore remains part of the familial complicity that abused and humiliated her as a child.
La deflagration s'est faite plus tard: je sentais que le sexe avec mon frère avait gravé en moi quelque chose de black et grave, mais je pensais que j'étais folle et pourrie, il n'y avait qu'une coupable, moi.
En fait, l'inceste et le silence qui l'entoure changednt insidieusement la color de soi et le rapport aux others. Ça imprègne the fond du heart d'un mépris abyssal, d'une grove qu'on retourne contre soi. Ça noue destruction et amour, qui fait le lit d'une solitude impénétrable ; et pourtant, personne ne voulait plus que moi la douceur. The forces of destruction are inconspicuous, so a motor drives me to prevent the attackers from attacking.
Je bluffe, j'attire les escrocs de l'amour, parfois des bad boys. Ils me dominant in the children, as I have heard of the primary choice.
It has been a long time since I lived on the pilots in the dessus of a tristesse of ravage and confusion that the person could not imagine. D'autres aggressions sexual étaient venues s'ajouter aux premières, au point de devenir un continuum. La culpabilité, la honte me rendaient faussement enjouée, comme pour tromper l'ennemi qui pouvait être partout, en toutes et tous. Puisque les gens voulaient m'avoir et puisque je n'étais rien ou un monstre, être une chose allait devenir une carrière intérieure. J'allais avec qui voulait, mais personne ne devait approcher mon cœur, mon réacteur nucléaire, pas meme mei. C'était trop triste, trop clos. J'accumulais ces experiences "amoureuses" pour étouffer un dégoût et un immense besoin de pureté, et ce cocktail faisait bizarrement de la lumière pour les other, donc je n'étais pas seule, même si j'étais très seule.
Anouk Grinberg, Respect, Julliard, 2025.
The explosion came later: I felt that the sex with my brother had burned something dark and serious into me, but I considered myself crazy and depraved; there was only one person to blame, myself.
Indeed, incest and the silence surrounding it subtly alter the color of one's self and one's relationships with others. It permeates the very core of the heart with abysmal contempt, with hatred turned inward. It intertwines destruction and love, preparing the ground for an impenetrable loneliness; and yet, no one desired tenderness more than I. But forces of destruction worked unconsciously, as if an engine were driving me to complete the work of my attackers.
I bluff, I attract romance scammers, sometimes even bad boys. They control me like in childhood, as if it were all a repetition of the original cause.
It had been a long time since I had lived on stilts above a devastating sadness and confusion no one could imagine. The initial sexual assaults had been followed by others, becoming a continuous cycle. Guilt and shame made me play games, as if trying to deceive the enemy who could be anywhere, in anyone and everything. Because people wanted me, and I was either nothing or a monster, being a thing became an inner career. I went with anyone who wanted to, but no one was allowed near my heart, my nuclear reactor, not even myself. It was too sad, too closed off. I collected these "love" experiences to suppress a disgust and an immense need for purity, and this cocktail, strangely enough, made light for others, so I wasn't alone, even though I was very much alone.
The narrator speaks of the risk of attracting new "calomnies" (slander), thereby implying that revealing repressed material would likely be seen by her family as "betrayal," which her brother would downplay or deny, if not even blame the author. Her father, playwright Michel Vinaver, is portrayed as rather absent, unemotional, and conciliatory. According to the book, he reacts not with shock to the initial revelation of the abuse, but rather neutralizes the situation. Here, too, one could infer that the father would likely perceive the book as an unpleasant, perhaps even embarrassing, revelation. Thus, the problem would not be the violence itself, but rather speaking about it.
The mother is portrayed in the text as a tragic, broken figure: in her mental illness, she is both victim and perpetrator. She offers no protection but actively inflicts harm, for example through emotional blackmail, belittling, and neglect. Nevertheless, the narrator feels occasional pity for her—but without forgiveness or romanticizing her. Since the mother had already died by the time of writing (the narrator says she waited for her mother's death to be able to write freely), her actual reaction remains speculative: had she been alive, she would not have accepted the text but would likely have interpreted it as a personal attack and an act of ingratitude. Due to her illness (manic-depressive episodes, alcoholism), a dispassionate confrontation would hardly have been possible. The mother would probably have denied her own failings or adopted a victim mentality ("I suffered so much myself.").
On m'avait prédit un deuil atroce puisque je ne l'avais pas aimée ; ça a été l'inverse. J'ai fait la paix with la femme qu'elle était ; la mère non, mais la femme.
Peu après sa mort, je me suis passionnée pour les textes d'art brut, des textes écrits par des êtres que la famille ou la société avaient décrétés fous, souvent enfermés dans des hôpitaux psychiatriques, parfois leur vie entière. The gens dotés d'antennes, en prize with d'autres réalités, qui dialogueuaient avec la vie profonde, dans des langues saturées d'enfance que bien des authors respectables envieraient. This was a premier spectacle with the music of Nicolas Repac. You want the world to recognize your vitality, you can see all the things in life, you can have love, and you won't have anything more. I want to fabricate the community with men, women and young children, to retrospect the children, children or children, to have a place in culture and hearts. À les écouter, la Folie changeait de camp, c'étaient les families, la société qui faisaient peur, et nous avions tous joué un rôle, par notre surdité.
Puis j'ai fait une anthologie des textes bruts, et enfin a second spectacle entièrement revisité, qui éclatait de vie et d'amour, mis en scène par le merveilleux Alain Françon et mis en musique par le même Nicolas. Je savais très bien que je chantais ma mère perdue dans la forêt du malheur, mais en bande, ces noirauds faisaient beaucoup de lumière.
J'ai also joué Molly Bloom de James Joyce, soixante pages sans virgule sans point, un flux aléatoire, du rodéo pour une actrice, une danse primitive qui aboutit au bonheur d'être sur terre. C'est la nuit, Molly ne da pas, elle pense à mille choses de sa vie, babille, d'étranges poissons nagent dans sa tête, beaucoup de poissons. Elle is like a giant flower, or a chèvre in the montagne qui ne pense pas à ce qu'on pense d'elle ; ce qu'on pense d'elle n'est pas dans son monde, elle n'est pas en représentation – cadeau suprême pour une actrice. Molly est cash, aime être pire que les hommes ; Elle is in the féminité comme les enfants sont dans l'enfance, sans honte, with a confiance insubmersible. « C'était une petite primitive fort naïve… On ne pouvait past tutur la virginité de son âme », says Joyce de sa femme qui l'avait inspiration. Ce travail m'a obligée à faire sauter de vieux bouchons qui encrassaient mon innocence, this innocence qu'on ne peut pas enemy à moins de minauder. Je suis remontée à la source. Alors c'était un rendez-vous with la vie intacte, l'enfance intacte, avec l'amour et la liberté, this liberté aux antipodes de la vulgarité qu'on associe parfois à ce texte. Jouer fait monter aux échelles, et pour monter, on se deleste de vieux poids. This is a fiction, mais les poids tombent en vrai. The pages are tournent.
Anouk Grinberg, Respect, Julliard, 2025.
I had been told I would suffer terrible grief because I hadn't loved her; it was exactly the opposite. I made peace with the woman she was; not the mother, but the woman.
Shortly after her death, I became fascinated by Art Brut texts, texts by people who had been declared insane by their families or society and who were often confined to psychiatric hospitals, sometimes for their entire lives. People with antennae connected to other realities, who engaged in dialogue with the depths of life, in childhood-infused languages that many respected authors would envy. I created a first performance with the musician Nicolas Repac. I wanted the world to recognize their vitality, to see these sparks of life, to see this love, and to no longer be afraid. I wanted us to create something in common with these outcast men, women, and children, to find brothers, sisters, or ourselves, to give them a place in culture and in our hearts. When you listened to them, the madness shifted; it was the families and society that instilled fear, and we had all played a part through our deafness.
Then I made an anthology of the rough drafts and finally a second, completely revised performance, brimming with life and love, directed by the wonderful Alain Françon and with music by the same Nicolas. I knew very well that I was singing about my mother, who had lost her way in the forest of misfortune, but in the band, these Noirauds shed a lot of light.
I also played Molly Bloom by James Joyce, sixty pages without a comma or a full stop, a random flow, a rodeo for an actress, a primitive dance that leads to the happiness of being on Earth. It is night, Molly is not asleep, she thinks of a thousand things from her life, babbles, strange fish swim in her head, many fish. She is like a giant flower or a goat in the mountains who does not think about what people think of her; what people think of her is not in her world, she is not in a performance—the highest gift for an actress. Molly is cash, loves to be worse than men; she is in womanhood as children are in childhood, without shame, with unsinkable confidence. “She was a very naive little primitive… You could not kill the virginity of her soul,” Joyce said of his wife, who had inspired him. This work forced me to pop old corks that had tainted my innocence, an innocence that cannot be faked unless one holds a purse to one's lips. I have returned to the source. It was, therefore, a rendezvous with intact life, intact childhood, with love and freedom—a freedom that is the antithesis of the vulgarity sometimes associated with this text. Playing allows one to climb the ladders, and to climb, one sheds old burdens. It is fiction, but the weights are falling in reality. Pages are turned.
Lies are told, especially to the mother ("on ment aux fous"). Lying is portrayed here not as an isolated transgression, but as a social practice that breeds and perpetuates madness. The narrator describes how the victims are blamed ("tu es une menteuse," "tu as bien cherché"). These mechanisms are an expression of a societal form of communication that protects power and stigmatizes weakness. The narrator ultimately performs a radical act of communication: she not only speaks about her individual experience, but explicitly breaks the code of silence imposed on the abuse at all levels (familial, societal). The book itself is a performative speech act. Communication is thus not only addressed thematically, but also determines the text's structure itself. Respect is a performative break of omertà.
A crucial dimension of Respect The text's strength lies in its temporal structure. It is written from the perspective of an adult woman looking back on her childhood. However, this retrospective view is neither linear nor sovereign: the past practically ambushes the narrator, drawing her into flashbacks that often merge with present-day reflections. The temporal structure is characterized by a simultaneity of past and present: the adult narrator experiences the traumatic scenes not as closed chapters, but as realities that repeatedly intrude. Often, the past is narrated not in the past tense, but in a kind of immediate present, which reinforces the impression that the wounds are not "over," but continue to have an effect. At certain points, the narrator comments on her past experiences from today's perspective, without devaluing the childlike feelings. This oscillation between childhood experiences and adult consciousness is a key literary feature of the text.
The text thus refuses a clear separation between "then" and "now" – a decision that also reflects, in literary terms, the ongoing, unresolved trauma.
J'ai percé la poche des "secrets de famille" parce qu'ils sont du malheur enkysté, du ciment sur des plaies vives, et qu'ils sacrifient des êtres sur l'autel des mensonges. I am surrounded by souvenirs and want to have the surplomb pour mettre des mots sur le silence mortel qui protège les abus, decrypter ce qui nous ronge. Je veux croire qu'affronter nos tragedies intimes est le début d'une délivrance commune ; This is what you see in the ensemble, the belle politique, which has the small verse of the grand and the grand verse of the small, chassant of the pourriture.
C'est pour ça que je parle. J'apporte ma bûche au fire.
Jusqu'à present, je n'avais parlé que pour les autres, surtout pour Charlotte Arnould, qui mérite tellement d'être crue et de connaître la paix.
Anouk Grinberg, Respect, Julliard, 2025.
I punctured the bag of "family secrets" because they are encrusted misfortune, cement on living wounds, and because they sacrifice people on the altar of lies. I immersed myself in memories, searching for the overhang to put into words the deadly silence that protects abuse, to decipher what is eating us apart. I want to believe that confronting our intimate tragedies is the beginning of a shared liberation; that would be true coexistence, the beautiful politics that moves from the small to the large and from the large to the small, chasing away decay.
That's why I'm speaking. I'm bringing my log to the fire.
Until now, I have only spoken for others, especially for Charlotte Arnould, who so deserves to be believed and to find peace.
In Anouk Grinbergs Respect The concept of respect is central to the book on several levels. The title itself signals an exploration of an attitude that was systematically denied to the narrator throughout her life: respect is not a given, but rather precisely what is lacking—and simultaneously what must be won. In the portrayal of her childhood, respect is initially addressed in its most fundamental sense: as respect for a person's physical and psychological integrity. This respect is denied to the young narrator by almost all adults. The sexual violence, neglect, emotional blackmail, and systematic silence within the family each represent a profound disrespect for the child as a subject. Her body is ignored, her feelings are devalued, her existence is rendered invisible. This first level of the theme of respect is characterized by the experience of disrespect, which, as a formative element of her childhood, is inscribed in the narrator's very being and consciousness. As the text progresses, the meaning of respect shifts: it becomes a prerequisite for healing and self-assertion. Speaking about one's own story—precisely, unflinchingly, and always riskily naming the experiences of violence—is an act of regaining self-respect. By no longer concealing her experiences and defying the societal expectation to remain silent, Grinberg claims respect for herself. Respect In this sense, it is less an indictment than an act of self-empowerment: The author demonstrates that being a victim does not necessarily have to lead to self-destruction, but that it is possible to reclaim one's dignity—precisely through unconditional fidelity to one's own memory. Another level of the theme of respect concerns the societal dimension. In her book, Grinberg criticizes not only individual perpetrators, but an entire social system that fosters violence against children and women through ignorance, trivialization, and institutionalized protection mechanisms for perpetrators. Disrespect is exposed here as a structural problem: Society fails to protect the vulnerable and instead demands conformity, silence, and the maintenance of a public facade of innocence from the victims. From this perspective, Respect This also leads to political intervention: it is not just about personal healing, but about restoring a fundamental social principle that has been violated. Finally, there is a particularly complex dimension to the question of respect in relation to the mother. Despite the extreme disappointment, the lack of protection, and the deep wounds inflicted by the narrator's mother, Grinberg posthumously confronts her mother not with hatred, but with a kind of respectful grief. She recognizes the social and historical prison in which her mother herself was incarcerated: the role expectations that suffocated her, the impossibility of freely shaping her own life. Grinberg clearly names the mother's responsibility, but she does so without idealization or vindictiveness. Here, a mature, multifaceted understanding of respect is revealed: what is required is not forgiveness or forgetting, but an unbiased seeing and acknowledgment of the truth—even the sad truth that people who are themselves victims can become perpetrators. Overall, the novel unfolds Respect The concept of respect is presented in a profound tension: between its painful absence and its combative reclaiming. The title refers to that which should always have been present, which was so often denied – and which the narrator ultimately grants herself at the end of her long journey.
The text concludes with an act of reclaiming: “Non, je ne suis pas ce qu'on m'a fait!” (“No, I am not what was done to me!”). This sentence is programmatic. Despite the overwhelming depiction of suffering and destruction, the ending insists on the possibility of self-definition beyond the injustice suffered. It marks the transition from passively endured trauma to active subject formation. This does not mean, however, that the injuries have disappeared—the pain, the images, the shame are present—but the narrator reclaims the power to define herself. The ending could also be read as an act of political solidarity: by making her personal story public, Grinberg breaks the cycle of silence and opens up space for others to articulate similar suffering.
Anouk Grinbergs Respect Grinberg's work unfolds the dimensions of childhood as a complex web of trauma, speechlessness, and later linguistic self-empowerment. Childhood appears as a space of maximum vulnerability, but also—paradoxically—as the origin of an unbroken longing for life, light, and truth. Grinberg's work makes it clear that speaking about violence is not only about individual healing, but also an act of social responsibility.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- "Il est facile d'ouvrir ce livre avec a certaine lassitude - encore un récit de comédienne mettant son intimité à découvert; encore un témoignage d'actrice racontant les violences auxquelles son métier l'a expose. Ces deux dernières années, l'exercice Est presque devenu un genre à part entière., l'écriture d'Anouk Grinberg dans Respect emporte très vite le lecteur par sa simplicité déterminée, sa façon d'éviter les précautions et les détours, sa volonté d'aller droit au cœur du « mal » – notion évoquée dès la deuxième ligne du livre.” Jérôme Lefilliâtre, « Respect », d'Anouk Grinberg: aller droit au cœur du mal, Le Monde, 15. April 2025.>>>
- « On n'est pas loin d'en crever, mais personne ne le voit » : the témoignage exclusif d'Anouk Grinberg sur les sexual violences, Nouvel Observateur, April 2, 2025.>>>
- Anne Diatkine, Anouk Grinberg sur les traumatismes vécus depuis son enfance: «C'est bien pratique pour les predateurs de faire passer une femme pour folle», Libération, 2. April 2025.>>>
