Cate Blanchett in Cannes: "MeToo was stifled too quickly," cinema still marked by inequality

Present at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, Cate Blanchett took advantage of a public meeting organized on Sunday, May 17th, to offer a bleak assessment of the MeToo movement in the film industry. "MeToo was stifled too quickly, which I find interesting," declared the two-time Oscar-winning Australian actress. For her, nearly ten years after the movement exploded, concrete changes on film sets remain insufficient. "I'm still on set and I count every day. There are still ten women and 75 men every morning," she observed.

An imbalance that affects the atmosphere and the work itself.

The actress isn't targeting individuals as such, but rather the impact this structural imbalance has on the daily realities of filming. "The jokes become the same. You end up having to mentally prepare yourself. I'm used to it, but it becomes boring for everyone when you enter a homogeneous environment. And it ends up affecting the work," she observed. Blanchett questioned why the voices unleashed by MeToo were so quickly silenced. "There are many people who have a platform and can speak with relative safety. And the average woman on the street is also saying MeToo. Why is it being silenced?" For her, the movement had nevertheless revealed "a systemic layer of abuse," not just in film but in all industries. "If you don't identify a problem, you can't solve it. If you stop this conversation, you can't move forward." "This is not the first time Blanchett has taken a stand on this subject in Cannes: in 2018, when she was president of the jury, she participated in a symbolic action on the steps of the Palais des festivals with 81 other women, in reference to the number of female directors selected in competition since the creation of the festival, compared to 1,866 men over the same period, according to the Guardian.

Some positive signs, and an upcoming film with Brady Corbet

The actress did, however, acknowledge some positive developments and praised the commitments made by several major festivals to improve the representation of women in their selections. "It's better for the audience when they don't always see the same thing," she remarked. Her colleague Julianne Moore, speaking the previous day at a Kering Women in Motion event, also addressed the issue, noting a gradual improvement in film crews. Cate Blanchett also revealed that she will appear in the credits of Brady Corbet's next film, the director of The Brutalist, an X-rated feature film set in the 1970s, alongside Selena Gomez and Michael Fassbender.