Roman Polanski, the filmmaker who fled the United States 40 years ago to avoid prison after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl, announced plans to make a new film, The Hollywood Reporter reports. From THR:
The spy thriller is based on the real-life story of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French-Jewish solider wrongly accused of spying for the Germans, whose trial for treason became a cause celebre in Paris in the 1890s. French Oscar-winner Jean Dujardin (The Artist) will star as the counter-espionage officer who proved, after his conviction, that Dreyfus was, in fact, innocent.Louis Garrel will play Dreyfus. Mathieu Amalric, Olivier Gourmet and Polanski’s wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner, co-star.
This marks Polanski’s first film in the #MeToo era and demonstrates the auteur’s remarkable inability to read the room. Since the post-Weinstein reckoning, two more women have come forward to accuse Polanski of sexual assaults that took place when they were underage teens, in addition to a sexual abuse accusation British actress Charlotte Lewis levied against Polanski in 2010. Despite all that, the Rosemary’s Baby director apparently thinks we still want to hear from him. And he thinks we want to see him tackle a story about a gross miscarriage justice—one called J’Accuse no less— when he has evaded consequences for his own crime. No thanks!
