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CULTURE

Swashbuckling French tycoon Bernard Tapie gets Netflix series

Netflix on Wednesday releases a series based on the life of Bernard Tapie, the controversial and popular French business magnate who was jailed in one of football's biggest match-fixing scandals, amid protests from his family.

Swashbuckling French tycoon Bernard Tapie gets Netflix series
French businessman Bernard Tapie in 2013. Tapie died in October 2021 at the age of 78. (Photo by Boris HORVAT / AFP)

Tapie, who died in 2021 at 78, was also a prolific actor and occasional politician — he even became a government minister — but made his biggest mark in French public life as owner of the Olympique de Marseille (OM) football club.

He also gained prominence in the early 1990s with the purchase of German sports apparel firm Adidas, getting it back on solid financial footing before a sale that blew up into a financial scandal that reached the upper echelons of French politics.

The self-made man’s fall was as spectacular as his life, with several criminal convictions, including for fixing a Marseille match.

The series “neither attributes nor deflects blame”, screenwriter and series co-creator Olivier Demangel told AFP, calling it “pure fiction”.

Tapie is played by French actor Laurent Lafitte, whose picture displaying a clear likeness to his subject has been plastered on French billboards ahead of the launch of the seven-episode series that retraces 30 years of Tapie’s life.

It starts in 1966 with his first successful appearance in a TV talent show, and ends with his incarceration for match-fixing in 1997.

“This is the story of a television salesman who wanted to get into television and who ended up incorporating television,” Demangel said.

Tapie himself was hostile to the Netflix project when the streaming giant first floated it three years ago, according to director Tristan Seguela, who knew Tapie personally.

“He said to me: I’ll stop you right there, the answer is no”, Seguela told AFP, saying however that he ignored Tapie’s objections.

Since then, Tapie’s daughter Sophie has come out against the show, saying “there is no limit to disrespect”.

His widow, Dominique, told the Monaco-Matin newspaper that “I don’t fear this series, I deplore it”.

Seguela said it was a deliberate choice to keep Tapie’s family at arm’s length, to preserve “our freedom” in creating the fictional profile.

Demangel said the main sources for the show were around 40 books on Tapie and masses of press reports, video archives and court documents.

“This is our take on this person and his life,” he said.

Among the liberties taken by the creators was the attribution of some scenes when Tapie was urban affairs minister to president Francois Mitterrand, when they really involved prime minister Pierre Beregovoy.

Actor Lafitte said he was not certain that the series, which he said was “very French”, would appeal to international audiences.

“Americans will say: So this is about a guy who starts with nothing and makes it. Big deal,” he laughed.

French-produced shows already on Netflix include the gentleman detective story “Lupin” with Omar Sy, political thriller “Marseille” starring Gerard Depardieu, and, most recently, “Bardot” which recounts the early life of superstar actor Brigitte Bardot.

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CRIME

French cinema boss on trial for sexual assault

The head of France's top cinema institution Dominique Boutonnat denied sexually assaulting his godson as he went on trial Friday in a case that has led to calls for him to step down.

French cinema boss on trial for sexual assault

The trial comes as French cinema reels from a renewed #MeToo reckoning that has seen several big names, including acting legend Gerard Depardieu, accused of sexual abuse.

READ ALSO: French actor Gérard Depardieu to be tried for sexual assault in October

Activists have denounced Boutonnat’s continued leadership of the National Centre of Cinema (CNC), whose role includes overseeing measures to curb sexual violence in the industry.

His godson accuses him of trying to masturbate him during a holiday in Greece in 2020 when he was 19.

“I looked at him to find my godfather and that’s when I saw someone completely different… It was someone using me to masturbate,” the godson, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the court.

Boutonnat responded in court that it was his godson who had initiated the situation and kissed him.

“I feel bad about leaving an ambiguous situation, but to say there was a sexual assault is false,” he told the court.

He was placed under investigation in February 2021 but still reappointed by the government as head of the CNC in July 2022.

Training to prevent abuse has in recent months become obligatory for films seeking public funding via the CNC.

The CNC told AFP that the case against Boutonnat came from “the private sphere” and had no relation to its activities.

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