“Stolen Service”, on TF1, Monday, November 22, at 9:05 pm.
A woman, in the hushed calm of a doctor’s office. A woman who has had constant abdominal pain for years, with no apparent cause. And an intelligent doctor, who tells him, in essence, that all his ailments come from a sexual assault, undoubtedly suffered as a child. Isabelle Demongeot, tennis champion, and protagonist of this story, does not seek for a second to deny: these attacks, she endured them for nine years, from 14 to 23 years old. The silence, to which her executioner forced her, she has also been living with since all this time. The former national glory understands in this year 2005, from the top of her 40 years, that she no longer has a choice: her attacker must pay so that she can partly free herself. The catch, in the story, is that the predator who took every opportunity to rape her was her trainer, adored by her parents, and local celebrity. Very quickly, Isabelle realizes that many teenage girls have served as prey to Tony Maillan. Moreover, she struggles to find the exact number of her victims. Of the 26 testimonies it collects, only two do not fall within the scope of the statute of limitations. Isabelle Demongeot is the first to testify about sexual violence in sport. His fight was terribly hard. The two-part TV movie, taken from his eponymous book, “Stolen Service”, is a beautiful tribute. Julie de Bona, who we saw in “the Bazar de la Charité”, delivers a subtle interpretation, between strength and courage.
Did you know Isabelle Demongeot’s story before accepting this project?
Julie de Bona Perhaps in my unconscious: his face had marked me. Reading the script, I understood to what extent she was a pioneer in denouncing sexual violence in sport. In the film, she has this magnificent phrase: “For me, tennis was a dazzling thing. “Her trainer abused kids who had a passion, a” glare “for life. And he damaged them. Each child carries this beauty within him, and that an adult slaughters him, it is unforgivable. The subject is also topical: when we shot, the law on the prescription of rape of minors had just passed from twenty to thirty years (April 21, 2021 – Editor’s note).
The two episodes show a fight and a judicial course of terrible violence for the victims …
Julie de Bona They had incredible strength. Many would have given up in the face of this surge of violence and hatred. Isabelle Demongeot also says that the eight years of trial were more painful for her than the nine years of rape. Because it’s a double penalty: she finally finds the courage to speak, and she takes it all in the face.
This violence is everywhere: on the side of justice and his entourage, who sees this trainer as a local hero.
Julie de Bona It moves those around them in a very delicate place: the guilt, so strong, of not having been able to protect the sister, the daughter … His mother is, for example, completely helpless at the idea of having welcomed this man to her. table. His first reaction, quite violent, is a phrase that overwhelms me in this film, and which comes up often: “Why didn’t you say anything?” Isabelle Demongeot writes it in her book: every time someone says it, it’s a stab in the heart. I think that’s the great virtue of this film: to say loud and clear that it’s not for a 13-year-old to say no or stop. Especially to a trainer who has all power over him, who is supposed to make him realize his dream, which parents idolize. I believe that today, we need to hear this simple reality that is the grip.
In the midst of the MeToo movement, does it appear as a pioneer on the refusal of sexual violence in sport, and on what rape, amazement and control represent?
Julie de Bona
When the coach says at the trial that he slept with a kid, and that it was a consensual relationship, it freezes me. One of the strengths of the film is to show to what extent this teenage violence prevents these women from living on a daily basis. When the doctor tells her that these symptoms resemble those of raped children, she is not in denial. She understands that these pains will be there all her life, if she does nothing. This doctor asks her if she was the only victim. She hadn’t asked herself the question. She told me that when she discovered a second victim, she did not sleep or eat for days. Other trials have taken place in the meantime, but she was the first. I find it beautiful that we pay tribute to him with this film.
A collective victory …
Julie de Bona We are in the middle of the sorority, which is so much talked about today. It was together that they managed to go to trial. Although Isabelle told me: “If I had to do it again, I don’t know if I would do it again”, she suffered so much.
Did the character of the gendarme who helped her really exist?
Julie de Bona I even met him! He told me that the day Isabelle Demongeot learned that her trainer was released, she blew everything in her office. It took him three hours to calm her down. And there was something to be angry about.
Have you met Isabelle Demongeot?
Julie de Bona I couldn’t envision this role without meeting her. First, to ask him for his moral authorization. Then because I wanted to try to feel her vibration to transcribe her fight with my sensitivity, as close as possible to what she had felt, to what she is.
You prepare your roles well in advance …
Julie de Bona I don’t know how to do otherwise. I have been very distressed since I was little. So I work a lot. I always wonder what I have more than another actress to allow me to play Isabelle Demongeot, if I have not embodied her down to the small details. In any situation, I know my character. If there is a scene at the supermarket, I know what she’s going to choose for vegetables! Which, in the end, gives me freedom to play and allows me not to be in control of my image when it is taken.
Is it important that fiction takes hold of this kind of subject?
Julie de Bona I sent “Stolen Service” to my best friend. She was upset, of course. But it also allowed him to understand why these subjects are at the heart of the news today.
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