Catherine Corsini returns with her film Le Retour, whose presentation at Cannes 2023 is causing debate. Indeed, as Le Parisien revealed on Saturday April 15, 2023, the financial assistance of the CNC was confiscated from the film, due to a scandal linked to an intimate scene involving a minor.
Saturday April 15, 2023, Le Parisien revealed that the National Cinema Center (CNC) confiscated the financial aid it had granted to Catherine Corsini’s new film. On a budget of 4.7 million euros, the film had received no less than 680,000 euros in aid. The reason? The work includes a sexual scene in which one of the actresses is 15 years old. However, said intimate scene should have been declared to the commission responsible for requests for filming involving children. Statement which has obviously not been made. And the scandal does not stop there since, according to our colleagues, the film by Catherine Corsini is also the subject of suspicions of harassment. Bad publicity for The Return, who was not mentioned in the selection for this 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday April 13, 2023. A selection which “has not been canceled but the board of directors wanted to know more about the situation of the ‘work”, said the general delegate of the Festival Thierry Frémaux to our colleagues.
Elisabeth Perez, producer: “Tensions on set”
Questioned by our colleagues from Parisian, the producer of the film Élisabeth Perez assured that the non-declaration of the problematic scene was a banal “administrative error”. Recognizing that there may have been “tension on set”, she had however refuted any accusation of “verbal or physical violence on the part of Catherine, nor in general on the set”. Be that as it may, “this breach of social law (the non-declaration of the sex scene, editor’s note) is materially constituted and is not denied by the producer” declared the CNC, which is explained by therefore “required to withdraw the aid” .Wednesday April 19, 2023, a close source would have revealed that during the submission of the script to the commission, the contentious scene was cut during the editing.
In addition, source, people present on the set would have complained of verbal violence and outbursts of anger on the part of Catherine Corsini, even accusing two other members of the staff of having made inappropriate gestures towards two actresses of the film.
